a 12 i ftllliiiipi 



Lynn Harold tteuoH 



EVERYDAY 
LIFE SERIES 




Class _ 



Book. 



Copyright^ . 



COBTRiGHT DEPOSIT. 






A LIVING BOOK IN A LIVING AGE 



EVERYDAY LIFE SERIES 

The Christian According to Paul: John T. Faris. 
Psalms of the Social Life: Cleland B. McAfee. 
The Many Sided David: Philip E. Howard. 
Meeting the Master: Ozora S. Davis. 
Under the Highest Leadership: John Douglas Adam. 
A Living Book in a Living Age: Lynn Harold Hough. 

Other volumes to be announced later. 



EVERYDAY LIFE SERIES 



A Living Book in a Living Age 



LYNN HAROLD HOUGH 

fl 

Author of "The Man of Power," "The Men of the Gospels," etc. 



ASSOCIATION PRESS 

New York: 124 East 28th Street 

1918 



W\ 



^ 



Copyright, 191 8, by 

The International Committee of 

Young Men's Christian Associations 



m .» w« 



The Bible Text used in this volume is taken from the American Standard 
Edition of the Revised Bible, copyright, 1901, by Thomas Nelson & Sons, and 
is used by permission. 

©CI.A494468 






CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 



I. The Living Book 1 

II. Some Sleeping Ages 10 

III. Signs of Awakening 20 

IV. A Living Man 31 

V. The Man and the Book 42 

VI. The Man, the Book, and the Rulers of the 

Church 53 

VII. The Man, the Book, and the Emperor 64 

VIII. The Man, the Book, and the People 74 

IX. The Man, the Book, and the German Language 85 

X. The Man, the Book, and Ideals of Life 96 

XI. The Living Age .'.'. 106 

XII. The Living Book and Our Age 117 

XIII. The Living Book and Democracy 128 



L 



CHAPTER I 

The Living 'Book 

COMMENT FOR THE WEEK 

"That man is dead and doesn't know it." So in a brief, 
cutting sentence a brilliant critic characterized a man who 
had wasted his vitality and was living out his years in dull 
lethargy, the mere husk of the man he had once been. Peo- 
ple differ vastly in this matter of vitality. Some are vividly 
and contagiously alive, some have flashes of vital energy, 
and some seem to be curiously lifeless. 

Books are like people as respects this matter of vitality. 
Some books are like stately cemeteries, dignified cities of the 
dead. Some books suggest a throbbing, busy metropolis; 
there are signs of life everywhere. The Bible thrills with 
vital power. It has a sort of stinging, inevitable vitality. 

The Bible is alive because it comes out of life. You always 
hear voices whenever you go near the Bible. Sometimes you 
hear men talking with eager zest. Sometimes you hear them 
pleading. Sometimes you hear them praying. Sometimes 
you hear them weeping. Sometimes you hear them singing. 
But you always hear them. Armies are marching. Workers 
are laboring. Judges are hearing complaints. Kings are 
ruling. * People are busy about all the interests of life. There 
is stir and movement everywhere. And above all the human 
voices is the high command of that great voice which speaks 
with the authenticity which comes from the Master of life 
himself. In the Bible human life becomes articulate. And 
deeper than that, in the Bible God becomes articulate, speak- 
ing in the language of men. 



[I-c] A LIVING BOOK IN A LIVING AGE 

'There goes a Bible character," said a shrewd observer, as 
the saint of the village passed down the street. "How do 
you get him inside the Bible?" queried a bystander. "I 
thought Abraham and Moses and Paul were the Bible char- 
acters." "I don't get him inside the Bible," was the quick 
reply. "I get the Bible inside of him. Bible characters are 
not merely people the Bible tells about. They are people 
the Bible makes." 

It is this power of making people which is the deepest 
basis for our calling the Bible a living book. It has life in it. 
It sends life out of it. It masters men's minds and rules their 
thoughts. It masters their bodies and keeps them clean. It 
masters their hearts and determines their feelings. It mas- 
ters their wills and rules their actions. And this it does not 
as a book of rules to which men submit mechanicallv. Its 
supreme power is exerted by a strange ability to get a vital 
grip on the inner motives of men, and from within to work 
out. So it becomes bone of a man's bone, flesh of a man's 
flesh, and life of a man's life. 

Of course, mere white pages with black marks on them do 
not do this. The Bible is not a book of magical formulas. It 
is not a god to worship. It is not a shrine before which to 
kneel. 

It is the adequate experience of a message which grips men 
and changes them and lifts them to a new quality of expe- 
rience and activity. It is the message in the Bible which 
makes the Bible a living book. 

A good many books have been written about man's quest 
for God. The Bible is a book about God's quest for man. 
The Bible is a book of which God i* the hero. It tells the 
tale of his love for. men, of his plans for men, and of all his 
passionate endeavor to win men to his own ideal for their 
lives. 

The Bible tells of a God who cannot be discouraged. Men 
disappoint him. Men turn from him. He will not give 

2 



THE LIVING BOOK [I-i] 

them up. He gives them prophets with words which sing 
and words which burn. He gives them leaders and insti- 
tutions. He gives them poets whose hearts are glowing 
with a sense of the meaning of God's nearness and God's 
will. And at last, in his own Son, God breaks into life with 
the glory of a sacrifice which will go any length for the 
winning and the saving of men. Life is transfigured as we 
watch the gentleness and the virility, the patience and the 
strength, the steady poise and the noble passion of Jesus 
Christ as he lives among men. At length he gives the su- 
preme gift. He flings himself against the Cross in one last 
deed of daring, suffering summons, of mighty ethical and 
spiritual achievement for the sake of men. And then, brush- 
ing aside the chains of death, he sweeps vital and regal and 
triumphant into the world which he has conquered. Stronger 
than sin, stronger than death, he opens the doors of a new 
life for men. 

You cannot imprison this sort of thing in a book. It leaps 
from lip to lip, from eye to eye, from heart to heart, from life 
to life. It is the dvnamic for the renewal of the life of the 
world. And perpetually when men forget and are heedless, 
fresh from the book leaps the life of it again, to work won- 
ders in men's hearts and to send them forth on life's adven- 
ture with fresh new power. 

To every man on every day the Bible is calling in the name 
of the strong, victorious life whose power it bears. And the 
true reading of the Bible is like stepping through a doorway. 
When you step through the doorway you find God inside. 

9 DAILY READINGS 

First Week, First Day 

Will a lion roar in the forest, when he hath no prey? 
will a young lion cry out of his den, if he have taken noth- 
ing? Can a bird fall in a snare upon the earth, where 
no gin is set for him? shall a snare spring up from the 



[1-2] A LIVING BOOK IN A LIVING AGE 

ground, and have taken nothing at all? Shall the trumpet 
be blown in a city, and the people not be afraid? shall 
evil befall a city, and Jehovah hath not done it? Surely 
the Lord Jehovah will do nothing, except he reveal his 
secret unto his servants the prophets. The lion hath 
roared; who will not fear? The Lord Jehovah hath 
spoken; who can but prophesy? — Amos 3: 4-8. 

These words are so hot and intense that they fairly burn. 
Life and religion were one to the prophet Amos, and he found 
them so full of exciting meaning that he could scarcely speak 
without shouting. He lived in the eighth century B. C. The 
people to whom he spoke were inclined to be religious without 
being righteous. They were inclined to make much of wor- 
ship and to be careless about character. Gripped by a sense 
of what it means to worship a righteous God, Amos came to 
shock the people into a consciousness of their hideous, tragic 
failure. His words thrill with passion. They are the roar of 
a lion translated into speech. As you read the prophet Amos 
righteousness ceases to be merely an idea. It becomes a 
mighty force which you must put in command of your life. 
No book of the Old Testament has more surging vitality 
than this book of Amos. 

First Week, Second Day 

Woe to them that devise iniquity and work evil upon 
their beds! when the morning is light, they practise it, 
because it is in the power of their hand. And they covet 
fields, and seize them; and houses, and take them away: 
and they oppress a man in his house, even a man and his 
heritage. — Micah 2: 1, 2. 

Hear, I pray you, ye heads of Jacob, and rulers of the 
house of Israel: is it not for you to know justice? ye who 
hate the good, and love the evil; who pluck off their skin 
from off them, and their flesh from off their bofies; who 
also eat the flesh of my people, and flay their skin from off 
them, and break their bones, and chop them in pieces, as 
for the pot, and as flesh within the caldron. Then shall 
they cry unto Jehovah, but he will not answer them ; yea, 
he will hide his face from them at that time, according 
as they have wrought evil in their doings. — Micah 3: 1-4. 



THE LIVING BOOK [I-3] 

The bitter cry against social injustice is lifted by Micah. 
He is another prophet of the eighth century B. C. He has 
seen the wrongs of the poor. He has watched the cruel and 
careless deeds of their oppressors. He does not remain silent. 
He dare not remain silent. In the name of God he cries out 
in protest. His voice has all the cutting edge of a great 
ethical indignation. And it is lifted with the sympathy of a 
man who has known with the most intimate and personal 
experience the intolerable lot of those who are the victims of 
social oppression. The very demand of religion, according to 
Micah, means the abolition of the oppression of the weak by 
the powerful. Social wrong must be repented of and turned 
from. A real opportunity for life must be given to the hard 
pressed men held under the burden of powerful social tyranny. 
The message comes out of life and it has significance for 
every age where men have ignored the rights of the poor. 

First Week, Third Day 

O Ephraim, what shall I do unto thee? O Judah, what 
shall I do unto thee? for your goodness is as a morning 
cloud, and as the dew that goeth early away. . . . For 
I desire goodness, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge 
of God more than burnt-offerings. — Hos. 6: 4, 6. 

How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? how shall I cast 
thee off, Israel? how shall I make thee as Admah? how 
shall I set thee as Zeboiim? my heart is turned within me, 
my compassions are kindled together. I will not execute 
the fierceness of mine anger, I will not return to destroy 
Ephraim: for I am God, and not man; the Holy One in 
the midst of thee; and I will not come in wrath. — Hos. 
11: 8, 9. 

Here we have another illustration of the fashion in which 
the Bible fairly palpitates with life. Hosea also is an eighth 
century prophet. His is a sensitive, tender, poetic spirit. He 
is the prophet of the suffering love of God. You feel that 
you have a sudden glimpse into God's own life as you hear 
his drawn and poignant words. You feel the heart of God 
torn with the tragedy of the evil of his people. You see how 



[1-4] A LIVING BOOK IN A LIVING AGE 

wrongdoing on the part of men hurts God as if it were a 
wound. With awed and reverent eyes you watch the strug- 
gle of divine love with an erring people. You hear a sob of 
pain which comes from an agony greater than any human 
suffering. You see human evil as the thing which tortures 
God, who in spite of it will not give up the people whom he 
loves. You begin to know that a God like this must be the 
Saviour of his people. It is all deeper than any life you have 
ever known. It is beyond all your experience. But it grips 
and holds you with the power of the very life and passion of 
God. 

First Week, Fourth Day 

Jesus therefore said unto them again, Verily, verily, I 
say unto you, I am the door of the sheep. All that came 
before me are thieves and robbers: but the sheep did not 
hear them. I am the door; by me if any man enter in, 
he shall be saved, and shall go in and go out, and shall 
find pasture. The thief cometh not, but that he may steal, 
and kill, and destroy: I came that they may have life, and 
may have it abundantly. — John 10: 7-10. 

We remember the poet who cried out so vehemently: 

" 'Tis life, whereof our nerves are scant, 
Oh life, not death, for which we pant; 
More life, and fuller, that I want." 



More people fail because they lack vitality than because they 
lack ability. Some years ago a New York weekly published 
a gripping story of a young man who came to the metropolis 
and absolutely failed to make a place for himself. He sank 
lower and lower in poverty and discouragement. Then there 
came an expeiience which completely revitalized him. He 
wore the same clothing. He used the same body. But 
veritable fountains of vitality were now playing within. He 
went forth and simply commanded the hearing which he 
had been unable to obtain. Success lay easily within his 
grasp and he seized it and held it fast. 

6 



THE LIVING BOOK [I-5] 

Jesus possessed a hundred secrets of vitality. He gave 
men a new intellectual vigor. He enriched their sense of 
every significant experience. He made conscience sturdy 
and strong. He stirred spiritual potencies undreamed of 
before. He took the man of waning personal power and 
made him into a man of magnetic energy. His gift to men 
was the supreme gift of life, glowing and triumphant. 

First Week, Fifth Day 

And when the day of Pentecost was now come, they 
were all together in one place. And suddenly there came 
from heaven a sound as of the rushing of a mighty wind, 
and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And 
there appeared unto them tongues parting asunder, like 
as of fire; and it sat upon each one of them. And they 
were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak 
with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. — 
Acts 2: 1-4. 

On the day of Pentecost the Christian Church was born. 
A few furtive, hesitating, confused men became a dynamic 
group ready to go forth to conquer the world. "Ye shall 
receive power," their Master had said. And right amaz- 
ingly was that promise kept on this wonderful day. They 
received a baptism in vitality. They became more glori- 
ously and splendidly alive than they had ever been before. 
Every power was lifted to its highest quality of vigor and 
effectiveness. Other men seemed half asleep compared with 
them.. They lived as if life were set to music. They spoke 
as if speech were a triumphant song. They thought as they 
had never thought. They felt as they had never felt. They 
spoke as they had never spoken before. 

The secret of Christianity is always with the men who 
have been revitalized by the potent presence of God himself. 
They do not need to speak new tongues. Bnt they always 
have a new tongue. Life has been made over again by the 
vivid, renewing presence of God. And they go forth to help 
in the remaking of the world. 

7 



[1-6] A LIVING BOOK IN A LIVING AGE 

First Week, Sixth Day 

But he (Stephen), being full of the Holy Spirit, looked 
up stedfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and 
Jesus standing on the right hand of God, and said, Be- 
hold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man stand- 
ing on the right hand of God. But they cried out with 
a loud voice, and stopped their ears, and rushed upon 
him with one accord; and they cast him out of the city, 
and stoned him. . . . And they stoned Stephen, calling 
upon the Lord, and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. 
And he kneeled down, and cried with a loud voice, Lord, 
lay not this sin to their charge. And when he had said 
this, he fell asleep.— Acts 7: 55-60. 

Stephen was probably the most brilliant young leader in 
the Christian Church before the conversion of Saul. He had 
a gift of effective speech, and he saw farther into the nature 
of Christianity than most of his fellow-disciples. With a 
skill in argument and a persuasive power of extraordinary 
character, he set forth his interpretation of Christianity as a 
great emancipating faith. He raised a storm of hostility 
which culminated in his violent death. And in the face of 
death his experience of the new life filled him with a serene 
gladness which the world has never been able to forget. 
With words of trust and forgiveness upon his lips, he swept 
in triumph through the gate of death. Not even the dark- 
ness of the tomb could cloud the gladness of a man in whom 
the new life was reigning. Death itself became an incident. 
Life was all in all. 

First Week, Seventh Day 

And he showed me a river of water of life, bright as 
crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the 
Lamb, in the midst of the street thereof. And on this 
side of the river and on that was the tree of life, bearing 
twelve manner of fruits, yielding its fruit every month: 
and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the 
nations. . . . And there shall be night no more; and 
they need no light of lamp, neither light of sun; for the 
Lord God shall give them light: and they shall reign for 
ever and ever. — Rev. 22: 1, 2, 5. 

8 



L 



THE LIVING BOOK [I-7] 

Carlyle once wrote an amazing passage about the strange- 
ness of life: "Like some wild flaming, wild thundering train 
of Heaven's artillery we emerge from the inane, haste storm- 
fully across the astonished earth and plunge again into the 
inane. But whence, Heaven, whither? Sense knows not: 
faith knows not. Only that it is from mystery to mystery, 
from God to God." In the words from the book of Revela- 
tion which we have quoted another note is struck. In won- 
derful symbolism the great future is declared to be a time 
of perfect life and perfect light. The incomplete is lost in 
the complete. Evil is overthrown. Death is finally con- 
quered. In the presence of God life is triumphant forever. 
The Bible, which surges with human life, which glows with 
the wonder of the new life God sends to men, closes with a 
vision of life perpetual, in fulness of joy, in radiance of light. 

PERSONAL SUGGESTIONS 

The reader cannot avoid the challenge which the living 
book brings to his own mind and conscience. Such glowing 
life is a promise and a hope and a prophecy. The last word 
is not the life of God in the soul of Amos or Micah or Hosea 
or Stephen. It is the life of God in the soul of the reader. 
Whittier cried out once, "I have opened all the windows of 
my soul." The man who does that does not read about life. 
He receives it. 



CHAPTER II 

Some Sleeping Ages 

COMMENT FOR THE WEEK 

The wife of a blunt, shrewd farmer was finding excuses for 
their son, who was very difficult to arouse in the morning. 
The father listened in impatient silence and then gave a 
contemptuous snort. 

"Humph !" he said. "If a man is asleep all the time, he 
might as well be dead." There is a difference, however. 
Sleep may be inactive. But it has potential power. The 
sleeping ages are those when civilization did not function 
well. But all the while the lurking vital forces were there. 
Some day they would make themselves felt. 

In the fourth century A. D. the Roman Empire became 
Christian. After centuries of persecution the Church came 
to the throne. In the fifth century A. D. Rome fell. Bar- 
barians were swarming everywhere. The culture which was 
Greece and the government which was Rome lost their grip 
upon the world. A chaotic period followed. Lawlessness 
and anarchy lifted their heads. It seemed as if that high 
energy of thought and feeling and organization which had 
wrought out the civilization of the ancient world had sunk 
into slumber. And while civilization slumbered, wild and 
furious forces raged unchecked. 

One power emerged to tame the barbarians. When the 
senile and decrepit powers passed trembling off the scene, 
the sturdy young Church came forward with firm and daunt- 
less step to do its work. It cannot be said that the Church 
which tamed the barbarians was the Church of simple 

10 



SOME SLEEPING AGES iil-c] 

brotherhood of apostolic days. It had become a vast or- 
ganization. It had become a method of government. The 
new life was often lost to view in the movement of the com- 
plex machinery. It seemed as if that fresh and inspired life 
which had swept like a flood of light around the Mediter- 
ranean in the first century had been changed into a wonderful 
machine with endless wheels and belts. Simple, vital Chris- 
tianity seemed to have gone to sleep, even as civilization had 
gone away to slumber. 

But the great machine was not without Christian power. 
And with all its limitations and weaknesses, it did tame the 
barbarians and it did make the way for the modern world. 

On the political side, at length feudalism began to assert 
some real authority. With no centralized government, men 
developed personal loyalties which helped to restrain lawless- 
ness, and it must sadly be confessed sometimes made for a 
sort of organized confusion. 

A terrible impact upon Christendom from the new world 
of Mohammedan power in the eighth century found power 
enough in the Christian world to force back the fierce war- 
riors of the Crescent. Later Charlemagne rose with greater 
authority than had been seen since the fall of Rome. But his 
empire fell apart after his death. In the tenth century the 
Holy Roman Empire in Germany came to light. Then 
greater popes arose and century after century pope and 
emperor fought for the throne of the world. 

A great dream possessed the mind of Christendom and one 
great crusading expedition after another sought to rescue the 
sepulcher of Christ from the unbeliever. Men were more 
occupied by the thought of reaching the tomb where the dead 
Jesus lay than by the desire to follow the principles of the 
living Christ. Fair, fantastic, and romantic were the dreams 
which floated before the mind of Europe. Chivalry itself 
was a moonlight vision of the night-time of the world. 

Religion was being bent to the purposes of ecclesiastical 

ii 



[II c] A LIVING BOOK IN A LIVING AGE 

lordship. Worship tended to become the observance of 
ritual rather than the direct approach to the Lord of all. 
The observance of rite seemed to many minds more im- 
portant than the doing of the right. The priest was like a 
master of magic who waved a potent wand. Devotion was 
often clouded by the darkest and crassest superstition. Con- 
science had its own times of sleep. 

To be sure, there were many noble Christians in the sleep- 
ing ages. Such a man as Anselm shines like a light in the 
eleventh century. As you read of his life you feel very near 
to a true man, a keen thinker, and a lofty-souled saint. But 
the sky is not full of such stars as Anselm in this sleeping 
time of the world. Ignorance had cast its blight upon Eu- 
rope. Lawlessness and barbaric war had left their blight. 
In many places evil was rampant while goodness slept. 

Manv men turned from the world in despair. The monas- 
tic movement in its original form represented an endeavor 
to escape from the world rather than an attempt to serve 
the world. The choicest spirits fled from the turmoil and 
the wild disorder and in the quiet solitudes sought to live 
their life of devotion, free from all the hard pressure of the 
world. They did unconsciously serve the world as they 
cultivated desert spots and made waste places blossom as 
the rose. They did unconsciously serve the world as their 
patient scholars laboriously copied old masterpieces. They 
did render service when the suffering poor came to the con- 
vent gate to beg. But all the while the eye of monasticism 
was turned inward toward the soul to be fed and disciplined 
and trained, rather than outward toward the world to be 
served. The spirit which would remake the world after the 
fashion of the will of Christ may have been a latent power 
in the life of the monk. But at the time it was soundly 

sleeping. 

The great dream of the Middle Ages was the dream of the 
Holy Roman Empire. That was the dream of those who did 

12 



SOME SLEEPING AGES [II-iJ 

think in the terms of the world. Christendom was one 
world, they believed. It was one great state. The Emperor 
was its secular ruler; the pope was its religious ruler. These 
two represented God's will on earth. One carried the secu- 
lar sword; the other carried the spiritual sword. This dream 
of the Holy Roman Empire never became a reality. But it 
haunted the heads of the sleepers and it became one of the 
most influential dreams which ever hovered before the minds 
of men. And in days of lawlessness and barbarity it did do 
something to give spiritual unity to men's thought of the 
world. 

These ages were full of meaning. The sleep was the 
preparation for a new day. And by and by the dreams of 
the Middle Ages were to be exchanged for the realities of the 
modern world. 

DAILY READINGS 

Seco'nd Week, First Day 

Now Solomon purposed to build a house for the name 
of Jehovah. . . . the house which I am about to build 
shall be great and wonderful. — II Chron. 2: 1, 9. 

And he garnished the house with precious stones for 
beauty. . . . and the flowers, and the lamps, and the 
tongs, of gold, and that perfect gold. — II Chron. 3: 6; 
4: 21. 

"He is as hungry for beauty as some men are for bread.' 1 
So said a wise student of men regarding a young poet whose 
whole life seemed palpitating with desire to find loveliness 
everywhere. The sense of esthetic beauty was not an out- 
standing feature of the life of the Old Testament people. A 
sense of moral beauty was deep in their life. But the artistic 
sense does find expression in such words as those we have 
quoted above. There is a definite desire to make you feel, 
not only the value and the size of Solomon's temple, but 
also its beauty. 

It was the Greeks, however, who gave to the world its 
sense of symmetry, of artistic loveliness, and of all the won- 

13 



[II-2] A LIVING BOOK IN A LIVING AGE 

der of esthetic charm. It was poured forth in hauntingly 
beautiful poetry, in architecture which seemed a part of 
nature's own beauty, and in art of a noble, chaste grandeur 
the world is unable to forget. The sleeping ages had for- 
gotten most of this, and it was long before the old Greek life 
spoke again its great message to the world. But in the ages 
of twilight and of dark, Europe was developing a new sense 
of beauty which was to find memorable expression in Gothic 
architecture. And this new sense of beauty had moral power 
as well as loveliness of form. Beauty itself must be made 
a Christian thing if it is to help and not to hurt the world. 

Second Week, Second Day 

Thou shalt therefore keep the commandment, and the 
statutes, and the ordinances, which I command thee this 
day, to do them. . . . All the commandment which I 
command thee this day shall ye observe to do, that ye may 
live, and multiply, and go in and possess the land which 
Jehovah sware unto your fathers. — Deut. 7: 11; 8: 1. 

"Men cease to be barbarians when they have to think in 
terms of law." So a judge of wide reading and profound 
thought once declared. The sentences from the book of 
Deuteronomy which we have quoted are full of the sense of 
the importance of law and its loyal acceptance. And the 
Old Testament has a place all its own in relation to the 
moral law and its demands upon men. 

In a certain practical sense, however, Rome was the law- 
giver of the ancient world. With a wide and careful organi- 
zation, with a far extended and consistently worked-out ad- 
ministration, Rome became the legal ruler of vast masses of 
men. When, in the sixth century A. D., the Justinian code 
was collected, it represented the supreme legal wisdom of 
the world up to that time. The Eastern empire did not 
keep its grip upon the West. The Western empire had passed 
away. As an organizing lawgiving power for Europe, Rome 
was no more. 

14 



SOME SLEEPING AGES [II-3] 

But just at this point the Christian Church became the 
heir of Koine. It became a lawgiver on its own account. It 
developed a kinship with the legal spirit of the Old Testa- 
ment and the legal mind of Rome. It developed its own 
wonderfully articulated canon law. There is a very real sense 
in which the Church became a new law rather than a glori- 
ous Gospel. In the sleeping ages the Church kept a sense of 
law and a system of order for all men alive in the world. 

Second Week, Third Day 

For thus saith Jehovah unto the house of Israel, Seek 
ye me, and ye shall live. . . . Seek good, and not evil, 
that ye may live; and so Jehovah, the God of hosts, will 
be with you, as ye say. Hate the evil, and love the good, 
and establish justice in the gate. — Amos 5: 4, 14, 15. 

A distinguished professor once made a remark to the 
effect that one of the great achievements of the prophets is 
the pronouncing of the word righteousness with unforgettable 
power. The words from the eighth-century prophet which 
stand above are sharp with moral demand and vigorous with 
moral power. And they are characteristic of Old Testament 
religion at its highest. If Greece taught the world beauty 
and Rome taught the world law, through the Hebrews came 
the gift of an ethical religion. Worship must spell itself out 
in righteousness. 

A right relation with God involves a right relation to 
men. Religion must make men virtuous and fair and faith- 
ful. The religion which has divorced itself from ethics is a 
foul and loathsome thing, which is worse than no religion at 
all. Hebrew prophecy joins worship and character in in- 
dissoluble bonds. 

This deepest word which came from the Old Testament 
was often forgotten in the sleeping ages, as indeed it is often 
forgotten among us. The darkest blot on the Church has 
always been the man who supposed that he could be ade- 
quately religious without being righteous. 

15 



[II-4] A LIVING BOOK IN A LIVING AGE 

Second Week, Fourth Day 

I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth 
on me, though he die, yet shall he live; and whosoever 
liveth and believeth on me shall never die. — John n: 
25, 26. 

"I cannot forget Him. I cannot ignore Him. I cannot 
get away from Him. He has become so great that He seems 
to fill all the sky. He has become so compelling that I think 
of Him all the time." Thus spoke a man roused out of a 
careless life of many years, with the impress of the gospel 
stories fresh upon him. 

In the first century a new thing happened in the world. 
The great power of moral and spiritual renewal entered into 
human life. The One who had the secret of righting all rela- 
tionships and giving men the power of a victorious life lived 
in the world. His estimate of himself is well seen in the 
words spoken to Martha in her hour of tragic suffering after 
the death of Lazarus. Quite simply, and yet with strange, 
august authority, he declared himself the center of power, 
the giver of all vitality. He has a relation to his religion 
which he shares with no other founder of a religious move- 
ment. Jesus Christ is Christianity. 

In the sleeping ages the Church quietly usurped the place 
which belonged to Christ. He was shifted from the center. 
While verbally admitting his supreme authority, the eccle- 
siastical organization with the pope at its head took the 
place of power. Practically, the Church declared, "I am 
the resurrection and the life." And that was one of the 
saddest tragedies of the time. The Church can make no 
sadder failure than when it obscures Christ. 

Second Week, Fifth Day 

I hate, I despise your feasts, and I will take no delight 
in your solemn assemblies. Yea, though ye offer me 
your burnt-offerings and meal-offerings, I will not accept 
them; neither will I regard the peace-offerings of your 

16 



k 



SOME SLEEPING AGES [11-6] 

fat beasts. Take thou away from me the noise of thy 
songs; for I will not hear the melody of thy viols. But 
let justice roll down as waters, and righteousness as a 
mighty stream. — Amos 5: 21-24. 

Again we hear the thunder in the voice of that mighty 
eighth-century prophet, Amos. Again we see lightning in 
his eyes. He is letting flash the sword of his condemnation. 
He is smiting with terrible and biting words the people who 
make ritual and ceremonial a substitute for character. He 
feels himself the very voice of God as he hurls forth the 
divine hatred of a worship which has left the life of the 
worshipers uncleansed. 

The sleeping ages fell into the very evil which Amos con- 
demned. As the Church became a great governing institu- 
tion, it developed a deeper sympathy with the ritualistic 
side of religion. If it was a new Rome in law, in a sense it 
became a new Jerusalem in worship, and it was the priestly 
rather than the prophetic side of religion which came to the 
front. Christianity was made into a vast and elaborate 
ceremonial. And sleep held the age so fast that when men 
did read the biting words of Amos, they did not know that 
they might have been written for them. And these are not 
old tragedies which have no meaning for to-day. One of 
the subtlest temptations of our time is that which comes 
when we surrender our hearts to worship without surrender- 
ing our wills to God. 

Second Week, Sixth Day 

And behold, a man named Joseph, who was a councillor, 
a good and righteous man (he had not consented to their 
counsel and deed), a man of Arimathaea, a city of the 
Jews, who was looking for the kingdom of God: this man 
went to Pilate, and asked for the body of Jesus. And he 
took it down, and wrapped it in a linen cloth, and laid 
him in a tomb that was hewn in stone, where never man 
had yet lain. — Luke 23: 50-53. 

17 



[II-7] A LIVING BOOK IN A LIVING AGE 

"As goes the sun god in his chariot glorious, 
When all his golden banners are unfurled, 
So goes the soldier fallen but victorious, 
And leaves behind a twilight in the world." 

So wrote an English soldier, who later himself made the 
great sacrifice. And in these days of pain graves have as- 
sumed new meanings to us. But there was one death unlike 
any other death. And there was one grave which captured 
the devotion of men as no other. 

The sleeping ages were full of vague, dreamy enthusiasms 
And one of the most characteristic of these was its thought 
about the tomb of Christ. That tomb was m the hands of 
the Mohammedans. Infidel powers controlled the Holy 
Sepnlcher. It was an intolerable thought. And the stories 
of suffering and ill treatment told by returning pious pil- 
grims cut Christendom to the heart. There was soon a 
movement on foot with brilliant and enthus.astic leadership 
The rescue of the Holy Sepulcher became the dominant 
thought of men. The saddest part of it all ^ that in the 
heart of many a Crusader there was a tomb for a dead Christ 
rather than an altar for a living Lord. 

Second Week, Seventh Day 

ieives one to another in the fear of Chnst.-Eph. 5- *7 «• 
"You cannot understand Christianity without putting it 
into control of your life." A university preacher was com- 
ing to the climax of a sermon whHi had entered deeply into 
the minds of his hearers, when he uttered these words The 
advice of Paul to the Ephesians, which we have just read, 



SOME SLEEPING AGES [II-7] 

brings the whole matter of religion to the place where it de- 
mands control of human life. It is to become the great 
commanding experience of the soul. It is to control all 
activities. 

Men are not to live by tne exaltation of wine; they are to 
live by the exaltation of God's presence — not intoxicating 
spirits, but God's Spirit in control. In the singing joy of 
the experience of God's presence, and in seeking to make all 
their relations to each other full of self-forgetful helpfulness, 
they are to live their lives. 

The sleeping ages would have been very different if the 
mass of men in the Church had known and understood these 
things. And this reminds us that the history of the Church 
is a warning quite as truly as an inspiration. But back of 
the Church is the living Lord, who stands ready to give us 
the secret of a better day. 

PERSONAL SUGGESTIONS 

The sleeping ages suggest the sleeping man. And one 
begins to ask himself, Have I been heavy and dull in the 
presence of life's greatest meanings? Have I been asleep 
and so have I missed the important call? Then there is that 
strange paradox — that a man, like an age, may be asleep in 
one regard and awake in others. What part of me slumbers? 
What part of me is alert and quick in full response. Some 
men sleep in church. Some men are always asleep in the pres- 
ence of religion! W 7 hat is the reality which I have missed 
because, like the disciples in Gethsemane, I have heavy, 
sleep-held eyes? 



19 



CHAPTER III 

Signs of Awakening 

COMMENT FOR THE WEEK 

In that amazing and daring volume of verse, "Spoon 
River Anthology," Edgar Lee Masters presents song after 
song inspired by a graveyard. He goes to a cemetery in 
Illinois and puts his muse at the service of the dead lying 
there, in order that all these graves may become articulate. 
It is all done with immense skill and shrewd cynical under- 
standing. You have a wonderful collection of voices from 
the tomb. 

We have been very careful not to call the Middle Ages 
dead ages. We have called them sleeping ages. There was 
a great deal of life during the period, of a deeply significant 
sort. And at last there came signs of awakening to a new 
and fuller life than the world had known for many a century. 

From the Roman Catholic point of view the thirteenth 
was the most brilliant and satisfying of the centuries. The 
popes won the battle with the Hohenstaufen emperors. The 
papal throne had far-flung and splendid power. Learning 
produced remarkable devotees. Thomas Aquinas gave forth 
the "Summa," the greatest theological masterpiece of the 
Roman Catholic Church. Orders of preaching monks were 
founded, with the definite idea of winning the world instead 
of fleeing from the world. The Franciscans and the Domini- 
cans brought a great religious revival to Europe. That 
childlike singing apostle of Christian gladness, Saint Francis 
of Assisi, remains one of the most winsome and appealing 
figures of all the Christian ages. In many a fashion signs of a 

20 



SIGNS OF AWAKENING [III-c] 

vigorous and promising life were seen in the world. And 
most of this vigorous energy held itself in reverent loyalty to 
the Church. 

The fourteenth century is one of the most unhappy of all 
the ages from the viewpoint of a Roman Catholic. The 
pope suddenly descended from his high position to be the 
puppet of the French king. The papal captivity at Avignon 
(1309-1377) revealed a bankrupt papacy. Then there came 
the great schism, with two rival popes hurling the thunders 
of heaven at each other, and at the worst three popes breath- 
ing threatening and slaughter and filling the world with the 
scandal of their contentions. Unity had become a byword 
and the body of Christ was torn asunder. 

By this time the world became conscious of the dire tragedy 
of the situation, and drew back from the ecclesiastical cor- 
ruption and falseness which assailed it, with an ethical re- 
pulsion which was deep and angry. Earnest men everywhere 
felt that something must be done. The Church could not be 
allowed to lie in the depths. The cry for reform went forth 
everywhere. The appeal was made from the Church to the 
general council. It was a question of reforming abuses. It 
was not a question of reconstructing the Church. The fif- 
teenth century is the period when men try to purge the 
Church by means of general councils. Pisa, Constance, and 
Basel tell their story of far-gathered church leaders. But the 
great work is not done. The papal schism is healed. The 
outward unity is restored. But abuses continue and the open 
sores of ecclesiastical corruption continue to run. It is in- 
evitable that some thoughtful men begin to realize the 
necessitv of more drastic measures. If reform fails, men will 
be driven to revolution, 

Some of the personalities of the period through which we 
have been hurriedly passing deserve our closer attention. In 
the fourteenth century John Wyclif did his work in England. 
This Oxford reformer cut more deeply than those who were 

21 



[III-c] A LIVING BOOK IN A LIVING AGE 

content to fight abuses, but hardly saw how much was the 
matter with the fundamental nature of the Church. He 
repudiated absolute papal authority, and at last turned from 
the magical theory of the sacrament which was a necessary 
element in the whole sacerdotal system. The seeds of revo- 
lution were in the teaching of Wyclif. His connection with 
the translation of the Bible into English and his leadership 
in sending forth those popular preachers, the Lollards, also 
pointed in the direction of a new sort of appeal to the people. 
If Wyclif's views and practices became general, Rome would 
have cause to tremble. 

Early in the fifteenth century (1415) John Hus was burned 
to death after condemnation by the council of Constance. 
Hus was a follower of Wyclif. He made Wyclif's principles 
his own and gave them publicity in Bohemia. His contribu- 
tion to the bringing in of a new day was a matter of personal 
loyalty rather than of original thinking. 

It may seem strange that the council of Constance, a 
council of reform, should burn the most eminent reformer 
of the period. The answer to the query raised by a con- 
sideration of this anomaly lies in recognition of the differ- 
ences between reform and revolution. The reformers from 
the University of Paris and the others who dominated the 
council of Constance wanted abuses abolished. They did 
not want the nature of the Church changed. They saw that, 
little as Hus might realize it, he was more than a reformer — 
he was a revolutionist. The papal supremacy and the abso- 
lute authority of the Church could not survive the universal 
acceptance of his views. So this fine and rare spirit was sent 
to his death by men who themselves professed to be re- 
formers. 

The ethical indignation of the times, ready to go forth 
and fight for reform, found expression in the latter part of 
the century in Florence in the Work of that fearless and 
faithful prophet, Savonarola, who, after a period of spec- 

22 



SIGNS OF AWAKENING [III-c] 

tacular success, was sent to his death by powers too strong 
for him. 

The world was seething with unrest. Reform from within 
the Church had failed. Let the right leader come and the 
day of revolution would arrive. That leader did appear. 
And nobody needs to be told that his name was Martin 
Luther. 

When we think of signs of awakening before the beginning 
of the Reformation there are several movements which 
should come within our ken. 

As we have seen, the ideal of the Middle Ages was soli- 
darity. One world-church and one world-state haunted the 
imagination of men. But something different was going on 
right before their eyes. Step by step France became a na- 
tion with enlarging borders, and increasing power in the 
hands of the king. England, too, had a life of its own, which 
became a genuine nationality. Spain attained unity and 
after the expulsion of the Mohammedans presented a solid 
front to the world. By the dawn of the sixteenth century 
there were three genuine nations in the modern sense in 
Europe. France, England, and Spain each had a vigorous 
and self-conscious and politically solid national life. Now 
nationality was a movement away from solidarity. Even in 
the eleventh century so great a pope as Gregory VII found 
that he had to be very careful of his treatment of so power- 
ful a monarch as William the Conqueror. 

Every step toward nationality was a step away from that 
international conception which played into the hands of the 
pope. It was the English sense of national life and its fear of 
papal encroachment which protected Wyclif. A land with a 
proud sense of its own life resented the draining experience 
of papal exaction, and it resented the power of foreign eccle- 
siastics sent by the pope. The new nations contained in 
themselves the promise of a new day. 

An invisible movement in the realm of the mind and 

23 



[III-i] A LIVING BOOK IN A LIVING AGE 

spirit deserves our attention. We have spoken of the fashion 
in which Greek culture and much of the finest of ancient 
life were forgotten. But the time came when they were re- 
membered. Men went back to recover the lost treasures of 
this ancient life. Petrarch of the fourteenth century, who 
has been called the first modern man, was alive to the finger- 
tips with this spirit. The new life which came to Europe 
through this movement has caused it to be called the Renais- 
sance, the rebirth. While some men went back to Greece to 
find what beauty meant, some went back to original docu- 
ments to learn a fresh approach to truth. And there was 
kindled that quality of mental life which came to be known 
as humanism. 

Erasmus was the prince of humanists, a man of profound 
learning, amazing wit, and a resiliency and brilliance of mind 
which made him one of the supreme men of letters of all the 
world. 

In Italy, where the Renaissance was not adequately re- 
strained bv ethical standards, it tended to £o back to ancient 
vices as well as to ancient beauties. So it exercised a cor- 
rupting influence. In Germany, where it was controlled by 
a more lofty and serious type of mind, it exercised a more 
noble and wholesome influence and helped to prepare the 
way for the mighty religious movement which was to 
come. 

We have said enough to indicate that at the close of the 
Middle Ages many things were happening and many more 
were about to happen. The sleeping ages had been much 
troubled in their sleep. There was a great rubbing of eyes 
and the waking time was now at hand. 

DAILY READINGS 

Third Week, First Day 

O God, thou hast cast us off, thou hast broken us down; 
Thou hast been angry; oh restore us again. 

24 



SIGNS OF AWAKENING [III-2] 

Thou hast made the land to tremble; thou hast rent it: 

Heal the breaches thereof; for it shaketh. 

Thou hast showed thy people hard things: 

Thou hast made us to drink the wine of staggering. 

— Psalm 60: 1-3. 

"Anyone can doubt; it takes a hero to believe.' 1 So de- 
clared a man who had looked life's tragic evils square in the 
eye. The struggle of the soul for standing room in the midst 
of the hard, cruel facts of the world is one of the wonderful 
things about life. The author of the sixtieth Psalm is pressed 
by evil upon every hand. But in the midst of it all the poet 
seeks Jehovah. He does not hesitate, or evade any ugly 
fact. He takes them all to the God whom he trusts. 

In the darkness and confusion of the Middle Ages, many 
a simple, earnest mind with no other refuge took the whole 
tale of the terror of the time to the great God whom he dared 
to trust. And this little-noticed piety of common men was 
part of the preparation for the better day. It was a hint of 
awakening after the time of sleep. 

Third Week, Second Day 

And it shall come to pass in the latter days, that the 
mountain of Jehovah's house shall be established on the 
top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the 
hills; and all nations shall flow unto it. And many peo- 
ples shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the 
mountain of Jehovah, to the house of the God of Jacob; 
and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his 
paths. . . .And he will judge between the nations, and 
will decide concerning many peoples; and they shall beat 
their swords into plowshares, and their spears into prun- 
ing-hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, 
neither shall they learn war any more. — Isa. 2: 1-4. 

"I cannot give up religion because there are so many im- 
possible things which have to be done.' : A man who had 
seen many victories of faith was speaking. He had the 
dauntless idealism of those who trust in the resources of 
Almighty God. 

25 



[III-3] A LIVING BOOK IN A LIVING AGE 

The words we have quoted from the book of Isaiah also 
appear in another prophet. They became part of Israel's 
deepest and most joyous confidence in God's purpose of 
lifting the world out of evil. That marvel of singing faith 
has lived again in many a heart. But never has the joyous, 
hopeful tenderness of religion been more wonderfully em- 
bodied than in the life of that prophet of self-forgetful gay- 
ety, St. Francis of Assisi. Birds and beasts, sun, moon, and 
stars he called his brothers and sisters, and he was the eager 
comrade of all mankind. In an age which was often in- 
human and cruel lived one of the most loving and tender 
men who ever walked the earth. And the Franciscans, like 
their master, sang the world into loving and living a better 
life. If they were voices in the night, they were voices which 
promised the coming of the dawn. 

Third Week, Third Day 

Wisdom hath builded her house; 

She hath hewn out her seven pillars: 

She hath killed her beasts; she hath mingled her wine; 

She hath also furnished her table: 

She hath sent forth her maidens; 

She crieth upon the highest places of the city: 

Whoso is simple, let him turn in hither: 

As for him that is void of understanding, she saith to him, 

Come, eat ye of my bread, 

And drink of the wine which I have mingled. 

Leave off, ye simple ones, and live; 

And walk in the way of understanding. 

— Prov. 9: 1-6. 

In front of the library of Columbia University is the fine 
statue of Alma Mater. The mother of learning sits in noble 
state. Her face of lofty beauty, her form of full-orbed 
strength, her whole figure with its satisfying quality, speaks 
deeply to the thoughtful observer. There is welcome. There 
is the offer of beauty and the offer of strength. 

The book of Proverbs tells of the ancient call of wisdom, 
in words which still have a haunting and arresting quality. 

26 






SIGNS OF AWAKENING [III-4] 

As the Middle Ages moved toward an end, the call of an- 
cient wisdom was deeply heard. Once again men studied 
Greek. Ancient manuscripts were brought forth. Scholars 
from the East gave the movement impetus. Enthusiasts in 
the West gave themselves with an abandon of devotion to 
the new learning. It was determined that the best and 
most beautiful that man had ever known should be his pos- 
session once again. Wisdom had called and men eagerly 
answered. 

Third Week, Fourth Day 

In that day shall this song be sung in the land of 
Judah: We have a strong city; salvation will he appoint 
for walls and bulwarks. Open ye the gates, that the right- 
eous nation which keepeth faith may enter in. — Isa. 26: 
1, 2. 

"It is a good thing to love your nation, unless that love of 
your own land makes you hate the world.' 1 The speaker was 
discussing the difference between noble and ignoble patriot- 
ism — the patriotism which would share the blessings of a 
favored land with other lands and the patriotism which 
would exalt its own land at the expense of others. The 
process by which the world has become conscious of such 
distinctions has been a long and slow one. The sense of 
nationality has played a great part in the life of men. It is 
sounded vigorously in the words we have quoted from the 
book of Isaiah. It is heard again and again in the Old Tes- 
tament. It fairly resounds as the Middle Ages turn on their 
hinges and we meet the modern world. Nationality is the 
key to much of the history of the last four hundred years. 
Judging it all in long perspective, we must say that national- 
ity must be measured by the contribution it makes to the 
life of the whole world. So judged, Israel issues resplendent. 
What can we say of modern nations? What can we say of 
ou- own land? 

27 



[III-5] A LIVING BOOK IN A LIVING AGE 

Third Week, Fifth Day 

The words of Nehemiah the son of Hacaliah. 

Now it came to pass in the month Chislev, in the 
twentieth year, as I was in Shushan the palace, that 
Hanani, one of my brethren, came, he and certain men out 
of Judah; and I asked them concerning the Jews that had 
escaped, that were left of the captivity, and concerning 
Jerusalem. And they said unto me, The remnant that 
are left of the captivity there in the province are in great 
affliction and reproach: the wall of Jerusalem also is 
broken down, and the gates thereof are burned with fire. 
And it came to pass, when I heard these words, that I 
sat down and wept, and mourned certain days; and I 
fasted and prayed before the God of heaven. — Neh. i : 1-4. 

Nehemiah was a shrewd and brilliant courtier who had 
become a favorite of the king of Persia. Although a Jew by 
race, he had the most intimate relations with the great king. 
But he had not forgotten his own people. He had not forgot- 
ten his own land. He had not forgotten the home city of his 
faith. And the tale of the suffering of his own people made 
him forget his own success in the thought of their affliction. 

When you get powerful men to weep unselfishly over the 
burdens of others, there is the promise of a change for the 
better in the untoward conditions. As the Middle Ages 
wore on, more and more men felt the shame and the tragedy 
of the fallen walls of the Jerusalem which should have given 
care and protection to men. It was not simply a matter of 
one leader. It was a matter of many earnest men. They 
created a new mood and a new attitude in Europe. They 
were unconscious forerunners of the Reformation. The man 
who refuses to ignore evil conditions, but lets their weight 
rest upon his heart and longs and plans for a better day, is 
one element in bringing the day for which he longs. 

Third Week, Sixth Day 

This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory 
of Jehovah. And when I saw it, I fell upon my face, and 
I heard a voice of one that spake. 

28 



SIGNS OF AWAKENING [III-?] 

And he said unto me, Son of man, stand upon thy feet, 
and I will speak with thee. And the Spirit entered into 
me when he spake unto me, and set me upon my feet. — 
Ezek. i: 28-2: 2. 

God does not accomplish his great purpose by crushing a 
man's personality. He works out his great achievements in 
human life by cultivating and developing a man's person- 
ality. Ezekiel fell on his face before God. But he heard 
the insistent command, "Stand upon thy feet and I will 
speak with thee. ?; Not grovellers, but strong men, are 
needed for leadership in God's kingdom. 

The great personalities who helped to prepare for the 
Reformation movement were sturdy, virile men. They 
stood on their feet. They had a tremendous courage and a 
titanic sort of strength. 

John Wyclif could never be called a weakling. He could 
look out unflinchingly on a dark and lowering and hostile 
world. His life gave England a new definition of one man's 
ability to think fearlessly and to speak resolutely. John 
Hus was not Wyclif's peer in intellect, but he was any man's 
peer in courage. When he went to the stake at Constance 
something more than his body was burned. A fire was 
kindled which in due time was to burn up many a super- 
stition and evil. In those old centuries and today the men 
who stand on their feet are men of God's choosing. 

Third Week, Seventh Day 

But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day 
should overtake you as a thief: for ye are all sons of light, 
and sons of the day: we are not of the night, nor of 
darkness; so then let us not sleep, as do the rest, but let 
us watch and be sober. — I Thess. 5: 4-6. 

Paul exhorts the Thessalonians not to sleep in the daytime 
of the world. He and they realize that the world has reached 
a new epoch. Mighty forces are at work. God has come 
into life in an entirely new way, and men are living in a new 

29 



[III-7] A LIVING BOOK IN A LIVING AGE 

light. For this very reason they must not be careless and 
dull. They must be alert. They must be awake. 

Probably the reader is inclined to feel a little superior and 
perhaps a trifle complacent as he follows the tale of the sleep- 
ing ages. Even the men who were like early voices of the 
dawn had so much less light than men have today. But to 
be alive in one of the great wide-awake ages is a responsible 
thing. 

Samuel Crothers, the clever essayist, remarks somewhere, 
"Doubtless our ancestors lived up to their lights. But so 
many more lights have been turned on!" The new age asks 
much of us. We are sons of light. We are sons of the day. 
Are we sure that we are entirely awake? 

PERSONAL SUGGESTIONS 

In every age some men are holding back. Other men are 
pressing forward. To which group do we belong? In "Rugby 
Chapel" Matthew Arnold paints a never-to-be-forgotten pic- 
ture of his father as a leader in the march on to the city of 
God. Our age needs such leaders. Our age needs loyal fol- 
lowers. Better things lie ahead. Better days are on the 
way. Are we opening our lives to God that we may be 
prophets of dawns yet to come? To do that means to wel- 
come the first gleam of each new day's light. It means to be 
making a way for the light God would give through us to 
the world. 






30 






CHAPTER IV 

A Living Man 

COMMENT FOR THE WEEK 

Thomas Carlyle's "Heroes and Hero Worship" is an elo- 
quent and persuasive setting forth of the far-reaching power 
of great personalities. Often we do not see the man for the 
men. Often the movement hides the leader; And frequently 
the thought of far-reaching and compelling forces obscures 
our sense of the meaning of personality. Carlyle helps us to 
feel the meaning of the one mighty man who emerges from 
the crowd and dominates the life about him. 

Martin Luther must always rank among the few outstand- 
ing men of the world. He is an Atlas who lifts the world 
upon his shoulders and carries it over into another age. 

The secrets of personal power, the methods of commanding 
leadership, the qualities which give a man the capacity for 
impact upon the life of his time must come to light in an 
adequate study of such a man as Luther. • 

When Columbus discovered America, in 1492, Luther was 
nine years old. When the year 1509 saw the coming of 
Henry VIII to the throne of England, and the same year 
witnessed the birth of John Calvin, Luther was twentv-six 
years of age. His active and far-reaching work belonged to 
the sixteenth century. 

Luther himself was the source of the saying that his father 
was a peasant and his grandfather was a peasant. Like 
Abraham Lincoln, he came from the common life of the 
common people. And it is extremely significant that these 

3i 



[IV-c] A LIVING BOOK IN A LIVING AGE 

two dominant leaders of the modern world were the gift of 
the homely, simple life of the people of the old and the new 
worlds which they influenced so profoundly. Luther met life 
with no barrier between him and its testing experiences. The 
common lot, the common suffering and the common priva- 
tion, he knew completely. The boy who sang and begged to 
win his way in school, and with open eye moved in and out 
among the people, came to know life, directly and without 
evasion. He knew it at first-hand. 

The father of Luther was a shrewd and able peasant, who 
had done amazingly well, considering his opportunities. It 
was his desire that his son Martin should rise still higher. 
And his ambition took the particular form of wishing that 
son to become a lawyer. So Luther was kept in school and 
introduced to the world of knowledge. 

Luther thus became a student, and in time a man of gen- 
uine learning. His professional life was really that of a 
theological professor. His school days at Eisenach and 
Erfurt were times of stiff, vigorous training, of real mental 
discipline, and of the intellectual growth which comes with 
such training. If his birth and early life gave him the ver- 
nacular and the passwords of the common people, his uni- 
versity training gave him the passwords of the world of 
scholarship. Now he learned an international language, for 
scholars of every land had a common speech in Latin, and 
he was able to speak and write in the tongue of the men of 
learning of every part of the world. If he ever came to have 
a message which the nations ought to hear, he had command 
of the language used by the thinkers and scholars of all 
lands. In the university life of the time two rival spirits 
met. One was the spirit of the old scholastic training. The 
other was the spirit of the new learning. Luther was trained 
according to the scholastic form and habit. He must have 
felt the humanistic currents which were moving all about 
him. But there is no evidence that he was ever profoundly 

32 



A LIVING MAN [IV-c] 

influenced by the mood and temper of the circle of human- 
ism. Luther never became in any sense a Greek. 

In spite of his father's desire that he should become a 
lawver, Luther entered a monastery. Here there were more 
years of discipline and study. As he had learned to know 
the world of scholarship from within, so he learned to know 
the Church from within. It was a long apprenticeship. 
Every aspect of the Church's discipline, every method of its 
leadership, every emphasis of its view of life became the 
intimate possession of Luther. In many ages men have 
attacked the Church who did not know the Church. When 
their intentions were perfectly good, their judgment was 
misguided at times because they did not know all the facts, 
and they were entirely ignorant of a hundred relationships 
which would have thrown light upon the institution they 
were judging. You feel when you read some of these men 
that the institution they are condemning is a bad enough 
institution. But you are not sure that such an institution 
ever existed. You have a feeling that they may be attacking 
a foe which is the creation of their own brain. Now Luther 
knew the Church. He was its own son, the product of its 
own type of training. For years he implicitly followed its 
guiding hand. If such a man came to the place of attacking 
this venerable institution, the attack would at least be the 
work of a man who knew his foe, and could speak its own 
language. A foe would have risen up in its own household. 

Then Luther became the correspondent, the friend, often 
the counsellor, of nobles and princes who represented the 
secular leadership in Germany. He understood their stan- 
dards and their ideals. He knew their point of view and 
their hopes. More and more they became men whom he 
trusted and in alliance with whom he did his great work. 
All this came as his life as a reformer moved on, but it is of 
the utmost importance in understanding Luther. The peas- 
ant's son became the friend of princes, and in a genuine 

33 



[IV-c] A LIVING BOOK IN A LIVING AGE 

measure he became an exponent of their point of view. This 
was not always a completely happy thing for Luther's own 
development. But it was a very essential part of his leader- 
ship and far-flung power. 

Going back of these relationships, to Luther himself, we 
find a wonderfully likable, vigorous, and compelling per- 
sonality. Luther was the jolliest of the great prophets of 
the world. Like Abraham Lincoln, he had a bubbling and 
irresistible sense of humor. His quips and puns and laugh- 
ing turns of speech are appearing all the while in his cor- 
respondence. The saving sense of the laughter in things 
must have served Luther in many a trying hour. A man 
who can laugh wholesomely and heartily is not likely to 
become a fanatic. He is saved from becoming hectic. He 
is restored to a certain poise and perspective every time he 
smiles. 

Luther had the raw, rude qualities of the life out of which 
he came. He is sometimes amazingly coarse. And he in- 
dulges in a quality of speech which is quite inconceivable to 
our more reticent and restrained age. In thinking of this we 
must remember that the sixteenth century was not char- 
acterized by a chaste and delicate refinement. Shakespeare's 
plays, when not expurgated, startle us in quite the same 
fashion as does Luther. In this regard Walt Whitman would 
have been quite at home with the Saxon reformer. 

Luther was one of the most human of men. His affections 
were deep and strong. His love for children, his feeling for 
nature, all the tender poetry of a warm and responsive heart, 
bring us near to a man whom we can eagerly love. There is 
no pretense. There is no hollow, soulless mockery of a feel- 
ing which he does not possess. There is a simple, true heart, 
gladly and warmly and affectionately responding to all 
human experiences. Some leaders give you the sense of 
being dehumanized machines. You can hear only the buzz- 
ing of the wheels and the movements of the belts. With 

34 






A LIVING MAN [IV-i] 

Luther the machinery never takes the place of the man. 
Around every corner of his experience yoi run across some 
new evidence of his hearty humanity. You are glad to ac- 
cept some men as leaders, but you would be sorry to spend 
a whole evening in their society. Luther makes you feel 
that you would like to be with him hour after hour. You 
would like to watch the flash in his eye. You would like to 
listen to all the play of responsive quality in his voice. You 
would like to sense at close quarters the tang of his vigorous, 
manly personality. He attracts you because of his essential 
humanity. 

Then Luther was a man of the most powerful and sturdy 
independence. He had a titanic energy. Sometimes his 
speech was like the explosion of a volcano. He was rugged 
and sometimes he was brutally vigorous. But he was strong, 
with a strange invincible energy which filled men with sur- 
prise. He was a man who could forge his way through the 
untried wilderness. He was a man who could set himself 
flint-like against ancient abuses. He was one of those men 
of awful, stalwart power whose virile commanding energy fills 
us with astonishment. If you saw deeply into Luther's na- 
ture as you watched his development, you might not be sure 
what forces he would lead. But you would be sure that he 
would be a leader. 

DAILY READINGS 

Fourth Week, First Day 

Behold, a king shall reign in righteousness, and princes 
shall rule in justice. And a man shall be as a hiding-place 
from the wind, and a covert from the tempest, as streams 
of water in a dry place, as the shade of a great rock in 
a weary land. And the eyes of them that see shall not be 
dim, and the ears of them that hear shall hearken. And 
the heart of the rash shall understand knowledge, and the 
tongue of the stammerers shall be ready to speak plainly. 
The fool shall be no more called noble, nor the churl 
said to be bountiful. — Isa. 32: 1-5. 

35 



[IV-2] A LIVING BOOK IN A LIVING AGE 

This fine outburst is a tribute to the leadership which will 
give protection, and knowledge, and ethical discrimination to 
the world. A man is to do this service for men. A leader is 
to achieve these things in human life. In that noble poem, 
"Rugby Chapel," Matthew Arnold pays a memorable tribute 
to the high human leaders: 

"Then, in such hour of need 
Of your fainting, dispirited race, 
Ye, like angels, appear, 
Radiant with ardour divine! 
Beacons of hope, ye appear! 
Languour is not in your heart, 
Weakness is not in your word, 
Weariness not on your brow. 
Ye alight in our van! at your voice, 
Panic, despair, flee away. 
Ye move through the ranks, recall 
The stragglers, refresh the outworn, 
Praise, re- inspire the brave! 
Order, courage, return. 
Eyes rekindling, and prayers, 
Follow your steps as ye go. 
Ye fill up the gaps in our files, 
Strengthen the wavering line, 
Stablish, continue our march, 
On, to the bound of the waste, 
On, to the City of God." 

Among these mighty human leaders Martin Luther stands 
forth brave as the bravest, strong as the strongest. He gives 
us a new sense of confidence in what the individual man can 
do for the world. 

Fourth Week, Second Day 

Then answered Amos, and said to Amaziah, I was no 
prophet, neither was I a prophet's son; but I was a herds- 

36 



A LIVING MAN [IV-3] 

man, and a dresser of sycomore-trees: and Jehovah took 
me from following the flock, and Jehovah said unto me, 
Go, prophesy unto my people Israel. — Amos 7: 14, 15. 

Amos was a man of the people. When his voice disturbed 
the complacency of the eighth century B. C. in Israel, it was 
a speech carved into form from the common life, rich with 
the flavor of everyday human talk, sharpened by hardship, 
and quickened by contact with the poignant experiences of 
the people's life. 

Such a voice was the voice of Luther. He did have an 
ecclesiastical training which Amos never knew, but his voice 
never lost the rude and rugged ring of the common life. It 
had the bite and the penetration of unprotected contact 
with the hard realities of experience. Luther was never 
saved from life. And so his voice had the very thrill of life 
in it. 

Up from the life of the common people a great and under- 
standing leadership comes. Out of the loins of everyday 
men comes the hero. The man who has been protected from 
life is likely to be a man who misunderstands life. The day 
which brings us nearer the people is a day which increases 
our power of leadership. The day which removes us from 
the people is a day which makes us less able to be of service. 
The man of the common life has one element in the making 
of the man of the uncommon leadership. 

Fourth Week, Third Day 

The appearance of the wheels and their work was like 
unto a beryl: and they four had one likeness; and their 
appearance and their work was as it were a wheel within 
a wheel. . . . Whithersoever the spirit was to go, they 
went; thither was the spirit to go: and the wheels were 
lifted up beside them; for the spirit of the living creature 
was in the wheels. — Ezek. 1: 16-20. 

Every part of the organism which Ezekiel saw in strange, 
symbolic vision was dominated by one mighty spirit. There 

37 



[IV-4] A LIVING BOOK IN A LIVING AGE 

were wheels. But the spirit of the living creature was in the 
wheels. And the spirit was in command. 

In our day too often the wheels command the spirit. The 
machinery commands the man. The great need of con- 
temporary life is to have all its machinery commanded by 
the spirit, all its belts and wheels at the service of powerful 
personality. 

In Luther's work the machinery of the epoch never obtains 
command. The spirit of Luther dominates the machinery. 
Dr. Shailer Mathews, in his significant volume of lectures, 
"The Spiritual Interpretation of History," cites Luther as a 
conspicuous example of the impersonal forces of history 
being dominated by personal power. Disraeli put an impor- 
tant possibility in fine phrase when he said, "Men are not 
creatures of circumstances. Circumstances are creatures of 
men." To be the master of environment, and not its slave, 
is to live a victorious life. The moral spirit of the living 
creature is to control the wheels of life. 

Fourth Week, Fourth Day 

Hear, my sons, the instruction of a father, 

And attend to know understanding: 

For I give you good doctrine; 

Forsake ye not my law. 

For I was a son unto my father, 

Tender and only beloved in the sight of my mother. 

And he taught me, and said unto me: 

Let thy heart retain my words; 

Keep my commandments, and live; 

Get wisdom, get understanding. 

— Prov. 4: 1-5. 

In these words the past is calling to the future. The con- 
tinuity of life through the teaching of each new generation 
by the generation which goes before is the heart of the mat- 
ter the author is declaring. Life is a growing, cumulative 
thing and each age must hand on its best to the ages which 
follow. The university is the bridge between the past and 

38 



A LIVING MAN [IV-5] 

the present. It is the means by which present knowledge 
will be handed on to the future. When a young man goes 
to college, he goes to add to his own resources the cumulative 
resources of the past. Luther was a man of very great per- 
sonal ability. He added to that all which came from dis- 
cipline and training by teachers who made the past the 
servant of the present. To be sure, ancient fallacies as well 
as ancient wisdom found continuity of life in this fashion. 
And Luther learned some nonsense with the wisdom he re- 
ceived. But his training made him the master of the essential 
resources which a fully trained man of his period could pos- 
sess. In any age to have less than this is to be handicapped 
in the work and the service of life. 

Fourth Week, Fifth Day 

And they were bringing unto him little children, that 
he should touch them: and the disciples rebuked them. 
But when Jesus saw it, he was moved with indignation, 
and said unto them, Suffer the little children to come unto 
me; forbid them not: for to such belongeth the kingdom 
of God. — Mark 10: 13, 14. 

A minister of cold and austere dignity was passing down 
the street. A couple of college students met him. After 
they had passed the rather icy presence, one of them, a coolly 
clever chap, remarked, "That man is too good to be human." 
His thoughtful-faced friend replied, "I'm afraid he's not good 
enough to be human." 

The story of Jesus rebuking the disciples who felt that his 
work was so important that he had no time for children is a 
fine illustration of the fashion in which humanity was a 
central constituent in his goodness. 

One of the most attractive aspects of the life of Luther is 
the tender and friendly humanity of the man. He wrote 
letters to his children which are classics in their simplicity 
and friendly understanding of a child's mind. With the 
weight of worldwide interests on his shoulders, he had time 

39 



[IV -6] A LIVING BOOK IN A LIVING AGE 

to watch the birds and write to his home about them. Great- 
ness did not remove him from all those happy arts of under- 
standing which keep a man near to childhood. 

Fourth Week, Sixth Day 

And they were all rilled with wrath in the synagogue, 
as they heard these things; and they rose up, and cast 
him forth out of the city, and led him unto the brow 
of the hill whereon their city was built, that they might 
throw him down headlong. But he passing through the 
midst of them went his way. — Luke 4: 28-30. 

When a man is beset by an angry crowd of men ready to 
kill him, you have a sudden and terrible test of the stuff of 
which he is made. The words quoted above from Luke tell 
of a dramatic episode in the life of Jesus. A scene of quiet 
Sabbath worship suddenly changes into a scene dominated 
by a howling mob. They cast Jesus from the synagogue. 
They rush with him to the height above the town, with its 
abrupt descent, down which a man can be cast. Then, just 
as they are about to hurl him down headlong, something 
happens. The one man who is to be their victim stands 
straight before them. His eyes flash with a personal power, 
before which they shrink back amazed. With regal mien he 
walks through the crowd and passes away safely. And only 
then do they recover from the lightning of his glance. 

Martin Luther was a man of immense reserves of personal 
power. He never stood forth more sturdily strong than when 
it seemed as if all the supreme powers of the vvorld were 
against him. He did not waver. He stood straight and 
strong and dominant in his fearless personal power. One of 
the penetrating questions to ask about a man is this: Can 
he stand alone? 

Fourth Week, Seventh Day 

Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name: ask, and 
ye shall receive, that your joy may be made full. . . . 
These things have I spoken unto you, that in me ye may 

40 



A LIVING MAN [IV-7] 

have peace. In the world ye have tribulation: but be of 
good cheer; I have overcome the world. — John 16: 24, 33. 

When we read about the sturdy strength of Luther it is a 
tale full of stimulus, and yet it has elements of discourage- 
ment. We are glad that a man has been so strong. We 
wish that we knew his secret of power. But we know that 
we are not built on that great, heroic mold. Then we read 
about the strength of Jesus. We hear him say, "Be of good 
cheer; I have overcome the world." And his word is full of 
infinite encouragement. It is not only that he was strong. 
It is that he possessed the secret of sharing his strength. It is 
not only that he overcame the world. It is that he is able to 
make us overcomers. And when we come to analyze the 
matter closely, we shall see that Luther's strength was more 
than that of a powerfully endowed nature. It was the 
strength of a man made mighty by the reenforcing energy of 
Christ. And the resources at his disposal are not withheld 
from us. We, too, may share in the strength of Christ. 

PERSONAL SUGGESTIONS 

One of the remarkable things about the ministry of that 
wonderful spirit, Maltbie Babcock, was the fashion in which 
he made religion human. When he left Baltimore to go to 
New York City, newsboys on the street were seen shedding 
tears because their friend was going away. We have seen 
how constantly and vividly human was the religion of Luther. 
And as a man follows the great human Christians, a telling 
question comes to him: Am I living near the people? Do I 
have a quick, hearty responsiveness to all wholesome human 
things? Do I have the understanding touch? James Lane 
Allen says of Mrs. Falconer, in "The Choir Invisible," "As 
she grew older she drew the ties of life more closely about 
her." If we do that, our religion is sure to be kept warmly 
human. 

41 



CHAPTER V 

The Man and the Book 

COMMENT FOR THE WEEK 

In a bit of verse, with a charm all its own, Vachel Lindsay 
writes : 

"I asked her, 'Is Aladdin's lamp 

Hidden anywhere?' 
'Look into your heart,' she said, 
'Aladdin's lamp is there.' " 

It is always true that the secret of life is within. Out of 
the heart come the issues of life. But it is particularly true 
that if we would understand the Reformation we must un- 
derstand the inner life of Luther. If we have a sympathetic 
knowledge of the fashion in which he struggled and the way 
in which he found peace, we will have a key to many things 
far enough from his own personality. You cannot under- 
stand the outer life of Europe in the sixteenth century with- 
out understanding the inner life of the monk of Wittenberg. 

Luther took the degree of bachelor of arts at the Uni- 
versity of Erfurt in 1502. He received the master's degree 
from tKe same university in 1505. Then, in the very year 
of his receiving the master's degree, he suddenly turned 
from the world and entered the Augustinian monastery at 
Erfurt. What was the cause of this quick and dramatic 
change of plans? *- 

The answer to this question lies deep in the story of Luther's 
inner life. The young man of twenty-two who entered the 
Augustinian monastery was already driven by a mighty de- 
sire for spiritual peace and victory. Under the gay banter of 

42 



THE MAN AND THE BOOK [V-c] 

as merry and hearty a student as ever attended a German 
university there was a tale of unrest, of awed and anxious 
questioning, of fear of the future, and of desire to be at peace 
with God, which gives us the really defining thing about 
Luther at this time. In anxious fear, and in the hope of 
finding the way to God, Luther renounced his former life, his 
plans, his whole world of human relationships, and entered 
the monasterw where he believed his soul would be bent and 
fashioned into the form which would answer to the will of 
God. 

No man ever tried the monastic way of salvation with a 
greater abandon of desire, with a more passionate intensity, 
than did Martin Luther. Nothing was too hard for him. 
No demand was too great. He risked his health. He went 
the full length of monastic asceticism. In the monastery he 
wore the reputation of a saint. He was a man his fellow 
monks looked upon with awe and reverence. 

But the one thing he most desired he did not find. His 
inner unrest was unabated. His disquiet of soul was un- 
changed. He had risked everything for God. He did not 
feel that he had found God. He had made the most intense 
and continued efforts to do the things which would make 
him sure of the favor of God. But the assurance simply did 
not come. He read great scholastic authorities. He plunged 
into the form of teaching most highly regarded. He grew 
mentally. He became more of a well-disciplined man in the 
theological learning of his time. But the worm of unrest 
gnawed away at his heart. 

He was in contact with one or two men who saw farther 
into the meaning of vital religion than he. They helped him. 
But they did not bring him the day of emancipation. The 
discovery which changed the world for Luther did not come 
through any of the men about him. It came through a 
book. It came through the book which we have called the 
living book. It came through the Bible. 

43 



[V-c] A LIVING BOOK IN A LIVING AGE 

Even the Bible did not have a fair chance at him at once. 
The men in his monastery were recommended to study it, 
and Luther did this right eagerly. But for a man trained as 
a monk to read the Bible meant not a simple and direct 
contact, but the reading which saw every sentence through 
the teaching of the Church. The Church gave you the eyes 
through which you read the Bible, and often this prac- 
tically precluded your reaching the intimate, real meaning 
of the Bible itself. 

Luther was driven on by his hungry heart. He was 
spurred by his restless spirit. And at last, one day in Witten- 
berg he was reading Paul's epistle to the Romans. His eye 
fell upon the words, "The just shall live by faith." It was as 
if the sentence had leaped from the page. Suddenly he knew 
that the great matter is not what you do for God. It is what 
God does for you. You are not to depend upon your good 
deeds. You are to depend upon God's goodness. The faith 
which accepts God's forgiveness through Christ's loving con- 
tact, and not the dreary drudgery which tries to placate an 
angry deity, finds the way of peace. Your life is not to be 
built about a great dependence upon yourself. It is to be 
built about a great trust in God. With characteristic in- 
tensity of decision, Luther flung his soul out in a commit- 
ment of dependence upon the God who looked upon him 
through the loving eyes of Jesus Christ. All the slavery of 
his days of grinding doing of endless deeds, and wearily 
counting them to see if he had done enough to satisfy God, 
vanished from his experience. He was a free man. He was 
a man who had found peace. He held with a joyous faith 
what God had done for him. He tried no more to rely on 
his own incessant activity. And the rich creative gladness 
of God's presence filled his soul. So the new life came to 
Martin Luther. 

The important matter about all this is that it was more 
than an individual experience. It was a typical experience. 

44 



THE MAN AND THE BOOK [V-c] 

In the first century Saul of Tarsus fought the same battle. 
And in the way of trust he found the same victory. Later, 
in the eighteenth century, John Wesley, that precise little 
Oxford scholar, torn with the tempest of his own struggle, 
waged the same conflict. And it took Paul and Luther to- 
gether that night at Aldersgate to bring Wesley to the place 
where his heart was strangely warmed, and he found the 
way of trust, entering upon the experience which was to re- 
lease the mightiest religious energies which moved upon the 
world in his time. 

Luther had been trying to solve life's problem by a sort of 
splendid ecclesiastical morality. The difference between 
morality and religion is this: When you try to do the thing 
yourself, that is morality. When you trust in God, that is 
religion. When your central thought is your own achieve- 
ment, that is morality. W T hen your central thought is de- 
pending on God's achievement, that is religion. 

Now, moral heroism is a noble thing. It is a superb thing. 
But it can never bring full satisfaction. It can never bring 
peace. The reason is that structurally we are so made that 
we can come to fulness of life only as we trust in God. We 
cannot successfully organize all the forces of our lives about 
our own strength. We can only organize them about the 
great trust in the mighty God who is our Saviour. A man is 
like a musical instrument. He cannot successfully play him- 
self. The God who made the organ must play it. Then 
glad music pours out upon the world. Every man is in- 
clined to try to meet life alone. He tries to climb the moun- 
tain path in his own eager, restless strength. But the way 
becomes too steep and terrible. And the great hour of life 
comes when a man learns that near him all the while is One 
on whose strength he can lean, One who will give him just 
the help which will enable him to reach the top of the moun- 
tain. We know the words of St. Augustine and how deeply 
he knew this same experience: "Oh, God, thou hast made 

45 



[V-i] A LIVING BOOK IN A LIVING AGE 

us for thyself and our souls are restless until they find rest 
in thee." 

The Church had given Luther rites and duties. The 
Bible gave Luther a living Saviour. The Church had given 
Luther a summons to the way of work, the Bible opened the 
door of the way of trust. The leaping act of faith which 
bound him to Christ was the central matter in Luther's 
experience. It is perpetually the central matter in Chris- 
tianity. 

This new relation pledged him to the sort of life God would 
approve. Faith did not mean license. Trust did not mean 
indulgence. To be bound to Christ by loving faith meant 
in the most eager way to do His will. But from this time 
on Luther depended upon the Saviour whom he trusted, 
and all his zestful life was an expression of his devotion and 
not an attempt to earn rest. Love had cast out fear. Faith 
had admitted him to the sanctuary of peace. 

DAILY READINGS 

Fifth Week, First Day 

Now this is the commandment, the statutes, and the 
ordinances, which Jehovah your God commanded to teach 
you, that ye might do them in the land whither ye go over 
to possess it ; that thou mightest fear Jehovah thy God, 
to keep all his statutes and his commandments, which I 
command thee, thou, and thy son, and thy son's son, all 
the days of thy life; and that thy days may be prolonged. 
Hear therefore, O Israel, and observe to do it; that it 
may be well with thee, and that ye may increase mightily, 
as Jehovah, the God of thy fathers, hath promised unto 
thee, in a land flowing with milk and honey. — Deut. 6: 1-3. 

Here we have a typical Old Testament passage emphasizing 
the significance of the law and obedience to it. All this was a 
tremendously important part of the development of the He- 
brew people. But the son of the law has much farther to go. 
He is not yet a son of the Gospel. Luther's early experience 

46 



THE MAN AND THE BOOK [V-2] 

was in this legal stage of life. If it had satisfied him he would 
never have pushed forward to something larger. But he 
found that the very way of loyalty, splendid as it is, leaves a 
hungry heart. He could not build his life happily and joy- 
ously about the sense of full obedience to the law. He could 
not be sure that he had satisfied the law's demands. So he 
fought on, and struggled until the great light came, and law 
itself was transfigured in a personal devotion. It is a noble 
experience to meet God as a lawgiver. It is the climax of 
religion to meet God as a friend. 



Fifth Week, Second Day 

Create in me a clean heart, O God; 

And renew a right spirit within me. . 

Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, thou God of my 

salvation; 
And my tongue shall sing aloud of thy righteousness. 
O Lord, open thou my lips; 
And my mouth shall show forth thy praise. 
For thou delightest not in sacrifice; else would I give it: 
Thou hast no pleasure in burnt-offering. 
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: 
A broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not 

despise. Psalm 51: 10, 14-17. 

The book of Psalms is the collection of poetry which tells 
the tale of the inner life of Israel. It is the song of the He- 
brew soul. It is the history of the Hebrew spirit. We would 
expect that here there would come flashes of intuition into a 
meaning in religion far deeper than that involved in sacri- 
ficial and legal observances. Such an outburst we find in 
the part of the fifty-first Psalm which we have quoted. 
The externals of religion fall away, as inadequate, and the 
deep inner meanings of religion emerge. You have a quick 
sense of the spirit of a man in humble and transforming con- 
tact with the Spirit of God. You have the joy of it poured 
forth in lyric speech. 

47 



[V-3] A LIVING BOOK IN A LIVING AGE 

Fifth Week, Third Day 

Wherewith shall I come before Jehovah, and bow my- 
self before the high God? shall I come before him with 
burnt-offerings, with calves a year old? will Jehovah be 
pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of 
rivers of oil? shall I give my first-born for my transgres- 
sion, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He 
hath snowed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth 
Jehovah require of thee, but to do justly, and to love 
kindness, and to walk humbly with thy God? — Micah 6: 
6-8. 

Here we have the reflection of the prophetic struggle be- 
tween legal and vital piety. The weight of sin is upon the 
conscience of the prophet. He wonders how a man can ever 
satisfy the clean and mighty God. Will any sacrifice be 
great enough? Rams by the multitudes, oil enough to fill 
rivers, seem insignificant in dealing with this problem. Will 
even the sacrifice of a man's own son satisfy God? That 
awful sense of an obstacle between man and the deity which 
has put terror into many a religion is hard upon him. Then 
comes his great moment of illumination. He sees a vision 
of the character of God. He sees the meaning of that divine 
grace which asks no terrible sacrifice, but accepts the humble 
man of human sympathy, who looks up to God in reverence 
as he goes about seeking to-do justly. It is one of the greatest 
passages of the Old Testament. It is a singing prophecy of 
the day when religion will be built about the thought of the 
downreach of the goodness of God. Luther knew both sides 
of the struggle. He knew the dreadful unrest of trying to 
propitiate a terrible angry deity. He knew the radiant joy 
of resting content as he accepted God's gift of peace. 

Fifth Week, Fourth Day 

For that which I do I know not: for not what I would, 
that do I practise; but what I hate, that I do. But if 
what I would not, that I do, I consent unto the law that 
it is good. . . . For the good which I would I do not: 
but the evil which I would not, that I practise. . . . For 

48 



THE MAN AND THE BOOK [V-5] 

I delight in the law of God after the inward man: but I 
see a different law in my members, warring against the 
law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity under the 
law of sin which is in my members. Wretched man that 
I am! who shall deliver me out of the body of this death? 
— Rom. 7: 15, 16, 19, 22-24. 

• 
Centuries before the time of Luther Paul fought Luther's 

battle and won the same victory. The words above tell the 
tale of his bitter memory o fthat fight. Robert Louis Ste- 
venson has put in memorable form the tragic drama of the 
two men in each of us, in "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." 
Paul knew the full horror of that inner antagonism. He 
could not organize the forces of his own life into unity and 
harmony. There was mutiny in the ship. The sailors would 
not obey the captain. And the harder he struggled, the 
more the wild disorder asserted itself. Augustine knew the 
same heartbreaking struggle. All earnest men have felt it. 
Luther faced its full meaning and, like Paul, he knew its 
power to torture. The harder he fought, the more the 
canker-worm of inner unrest ate away in his soul. 

Fifth Week, Fifth Day 

Being therefore justified by faith, we have peace with 
God through our Lord Jesus Christ; through whom also 
we have had our access by faith into this grace wherein 
we stand; and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. 
— Rom. 5: 1, 2. 

Across the ages Paul was the guide of Luther. The words 
we have quoted here from Romans have the heart of Luther's 
Christian life and the heart of the Reformation in them. 
Can we fathom their power to lead Luther into a new world? 
Can we apprehend their power to show him the path which 
led away from the night into the full light of day? 

If we look deep into our own hearts, and face the meaning 
of our own deepest struggles, we shall find it easier to under- 
stand both Paul and Luther, for these words are spoken out 
of profound human struggle with a great ethical ideal and by 

49 



[V-6] A LIVING BOOK IN A LIVING AGE 

such a struggle in the life of the reader they must be inter- 
preted. As long as Paul tried to do the great things himself 
he failed. When he made one great leap of trust in the living 
Christ who had died for him, all the world was made new. 
Luther failed when he tried to do the gieat thing himself. 
In the hour when he trusted Christ to take care of past and 
present and future, the clouds lifted. The way of earnest, 
noble self-dependence is the way of depression and unrest. 
The way of living trust in Jesus Christ is the way of a new 
exultant gladness, the way of peace and power. A man who 
drops from a burning building into the arms of a fireman 
on a ladder just below him must decide to trust himself to 
the strong fireman's arms. But he cannot do the jumping 
and also catch himself. Trying to be both the saved and 
the saviour makes half the spiritual unrest of the world. 

Fifth Week, Sixth Day 

There is therefore now no condemnation to them that 
are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in 
Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and of 
death. For what the law could not do, in that it was weak 
through the flesh, God, sending his own Son in the like- 
ness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: 
that the ordinance of the law might be fulfilled in us, 
who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. — Rom. 
8: 1-4. 

Some interesting questions arise about the man who has 
passed from a legal religion into the freedom of a vital trust 
in Christ. It is easy to see that the chains are broken. He 
is a slave no more. Charles Lamb spoke once of the "dreary 
drudgery of the desk's dead wood," feeling that he was a 
serf, held to his desk as serfs of old days were held to land. 
All the feeling of serfdom passes when a man enters the free- 
dom of friendship with God through the way of trust in 

# 

Christ. But does freedom mean lawlessness? Can he do as 
he pleases without restraint? At once Paul makes it clear 
that freedom from the law does not mean freedom to sin. 

50 



THE MAN AND THE BOOK [V-7] 

Freedom from legal chains does not mean license for wrong- 
doing. The new life delivers a man from drudgery, but its 
very spirit protects him from evil. The very vitality of his 
trust in Christ makes him love what his Master loves and 
hate what his Master hates. He still keeps the Ten Com- 
mandments, but he does it now because he loves to do it, 
and not because he is driven by the lash of his sense of duty. 
Obedience itself is glorified by the enthusiasm of his devotion. 
So the Gospel conserves all that is valuable in the law and 
transfigures it. The law itself is transformed by a man's 
relation to Christ. It is no more a taskmaster. It becomes 
a friend. 

Fifth Week, Seventh Day 

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for 
us, who is against us? He that spared not his own Son, 
but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not also 
with him freely give us all things? . . . Who shall 
separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or 
anguish, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, 
or sword? . . . Nay, in all these things we are more than 
conquerors through him that loved us. For I am per- 
suaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor prin- 
cipalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor 
powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, 
shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which 
is in Christ Jesus our Lord.— Rom. 8: 31, 32, 35, 37-39. 

Paul has given up forever the way of trust in himself. He 
has accepted for all time the way of trust in God. All the 
dreary, tragic sense of his own incapacity is lost in the solid, 
joyous strength of his confidence in the power of God to 
keep him. His voice is lifted in one of those outbursts of 
rapture, which are all the more impressive in a man whose 
mind had such disciplined, quiet strength, and such acute 
critical power. His religious life is as solid as the character 
of God. It is as deep as the power of Christ's suffering love 
to penetrate his spirit. It is the one thing which is sure, 
though life itself should fall apart. All that Paul felt in 

5i 



[V-7] A LIVING BOOK IN A LIVING AGE 

these regards Luther felt as well. And the Epistle to the 
Romans is in a very significant sense a source book for the 
religious life of Luther and for the victorious spirit of the 
Reformation. Paul helps to account for Luther. 

PERSONAL SUGGESTIONS 

\t last the significance of Paul's struggle and Augustine's 
and Luther's and Wesley's lies at one point. These men met 
typical human problems. Their fight and their victory are 
typical. We are all tempted to try the way of self-depend- 
ence. We all need to learn the way of trust. The question 
which emerges is a definitely personal one. Have I learned 
the secret which transformed Luther's life? Have I learned 
the secret which through Wesley changed eighteenth cen- 
tury England? Robert William Dale put it all very simply 
in telling of his own struggle: "At last, how I hardly know, 
I ceased thinking of myself and began thinking of Christ. 
Then I wondered that I should have been perplexed for 
a single hour." 



52 



CHAPTER VI 

The Man, the Book, and the 
Rulers of the Church 

COMMENT FOR THE WEEK 

That gifted American writer, Margaret Deland, has created 
more than one memorable character. It may be safely said, 
however, that none of them will be remembered longer, or 
with a deeper sense of gratitude, than that pastor of infinite 
sympathy and strong and patient discernment, Dr. Laven- 
dar. As you read the tale of his activities you come to know 
much about a pastor's heart. Luther was a teacher and a 
pastor. He had responsibilities for others as well as for 
himself. And it is through the study of Luther as a pastor 
that we must approach the movement which is called the 
Reformation. 

In the very nature of things Luther must have desired to 
share with others the new life which had transformed the 
world for him. His position as teacher and religious guide 
gave -him ample opportunities. Soon he was busily engaged 
in sharing the deepest things which had enriched his own 
spirit. 

Then in the year 1517 Tetzel began to peddle indulgences 
in Germany. The pope had great plans for St. Peter's. 
Money was badly needed, and the traffic in indulgences was 
the result. The theory of indulgences may be briefly stated. 
The Church had a method of imposing penances. The old 
Teutonic method of dealing on a basis of money value led to 
a suggestion of the substitution of money payment for the 

53 



[VI-c] A LIVING BOOK IN A LIVING AGE 

carrying out of the penance. So the church treasury could 
be enriched, and so the individual would feel that he had met 
the demands of the situation. Strictly speaking, only eccle- 
siastical sentences could be remitted by means of indulgence 
money. But the everyday man did not make this distinction. 
Tetzel, the popular advocate of the plan, did not take pains 
to prevent loose thinking. He himself declared that the 
soul of your friend would leave purgatory as your coin 
dropped into the box. And the untutored found it easy to 
believe that indulgences secured the forgiveness of sins. 

When Tetzel came near to Wittenberg there was a good 
deal of excitement among Luther's people. There were 
naturally those who wanted to profit by the tremendous 
spiritual opportunity which they believed to be within their 
reach. Luther's mind quickly went to the root of the mat- 
ter. If a man was depending upon indulgences, he would 
not be depending upon God. His whole religious life would 
be cheapened and made unethical by the very experience of 
trafficking in indulgences. The new life which was being 
encouraged by Luther would be swept aside and in its place 
would come a blighting superstition. Full of the joy and 
ethical vigor of his own powerful experience, Luther could 
not see his people turn from golden coin to counterfeit with- 
out a struggle. He began to oppose the indulgence selling. 
The climax came when he nailed the famous theses to the 
door of the church in Wittenberg. The theses were in Latin 
and in form were statements made to serve as a basis for 
academic disputation. No one was more surprised at the 
result of the posting of the theses than Luther himself. They 
were soon translated, and like wildfire they ran over Ger- 
many. The people were ready for Luther's statements. 
What he said clearly they had been dimly thinking. His 
name was on every one's lips. He became the hero of the 
hour. 

As the controversy raged one question emerged: What 

54 




MAN, BOOK, AND CHURCH [VI-c] 

would be the attitude of the pope? Luther claimed that 
once correctly informed, the pope would repudiate the ex- 
cesses involved in the indulgence selling. The upholders of 
the practice insisted that they had the entire support of the 
pope. 

Luther had no thought of being disloyal to the constituted 
ecclesiastical authority. He was a loyal son of the Church 
and believed that he would be vindicated by the supreme 
power. As time went on, however, it became increasingly 
clear that powerful forces were arrayed against him. He had 
to face the question as to what he would do if the pope re- 
fused to support him. Once clearly put, the question was 
not hard for Luther to answer. He must be loyal to the new 
life which energized his spirit, whatever the pope said. So 
papal representatives found Luther infinitely respectful, but 
quite unbending concerning the central matter. And when 
he tried to fit into a compromise, it was not of such a char- 
acter as to lead him to feel that he invalidated his central 
position. How far he had gone in the name of his loyalty to 
his mighty and transforming experience became clear in the 
famous disputations with Eck. Here it was pointed out to 
Luther that John Hus had held some of the very opinions 
which Luther promulgated and that for these very opinions 
Hus had been condemned by the general council at Con- 
stance. Confronted by the dilemma of relinquishing what 
had become his most cherished convictions, or of challenging 
the judgment of a general council, Luther did not waver. 
Boldly he declared for Hus and against the general council. 
Boldly he declared that a general council might err. This 
declaration took him out of the group of conservative re- 
formers and put him into the group of revolutionists. From 
the standpoint of medieval orthodoxy there was now only 
one thing to do with Luther. That was to crush him. 

To understand Luther at this period of his life we must 
understand his profound loyalty to much in the past, as well 

55 



[VI-c] A LIVING BOOK IN A LIVING AGE 

as the radical and transforming character of his Christian 
experience. There was a vein of very deep conservatism run- 
ning through all the character of Luther. He cared for old 
things. He cared for old ways. Nothing would have pleased 
him more deeply than the suggestion of a way by which he 
could have remained a simple and humble child of the Church, 
and yet have kept all the wonder of his new life. But when 
he saw that he could not have both, he did not flinch or 
attempt to avoid the issue. When the papal bull announcing 
his excommunication arrived, he was ready. At a public 
gathering he burned the papal bull and repudiated the au- 
thority of the supreme religious sovereign of the world. 

Three things stand out with striking clearness as we study 
this period of Luther's life. The first is that a tremendous 
thing had happened within him. The more we study Luther's 
dauntless courage, the more we know that only something 
soul-shaking and soul-transforming can account for it. The 
hesitating monk, moving with infinite self-distrust through a 
thousand petty and scrupulous observances, has disappeared 
forever. In his place there stands a man of resource and 
strength and poise. His clear eyes pierce to the central 
meanings of things. Some bright light burning in his soul 
illuminates all that he looks upon. In the presence of his 
mind things resolve themselves into their defining and essen- 
tial qualities. He touches issues and suddenly \hey appear 
in their real meaning. What is the secret of this sure-footed 
mind and this far-penetrating insight? We can see it shining 
in Luther's eyes. We can feel it in the rich vibrancy of his 
speech. He has found a source of inner gladness and repose. 
He is organizing his life about a principle which gives him 
infinite peace. 

The second thing which strikes us as we study Luther in 
these testing days is this: the new Luther is the creation of 
the Bible. A fresh contact with the deepest religious ex- 
perience of the New Testament has made Luther what he is. 

56 






MAN, BOOK, AND CHURCH [VI-c] 

In the first days of gladness in his new relationship it did not 
occur to Luther that there was planted in his life a seed of 
antagonism to the existing Church. He had not seen that a 
churchly Christian in the medieval sense was one thing, and 
a Christian in Paul's sense of vital trust was another. He 
followed Paul into the light and he was contented to go where 
the light would lead him. The living book made a new and 
powerful kind of man of him, and he quite simply accepted 
the responsibility of putting the new manhood in command 
of all his relationships. He had not learned that the Church 
could be jealous of the book. When he did learn it, his soul 
was completely anchored to the vital message of the book. 
Luther was never happier than when expounding the Bible 
as the way to that life of trust which is the secret of personal 
peace and personal victory. If he must give up either the 
pope or the book, he saw quite clearly which one he could 
do without. 

The third thing which is forced upon us with striking power 
is this: Luther not only felt the things of which we have 
written, he also lived them. There are a good many men 
whose hearts go farther than their hands ever follow, and at 
last their hearts lose the beating joy which called in vain 
for loyal hands to express. You can never keep the joy to 
which you are disloyal. There are a good many men whose 
beads go farther than their feet ever follow. And by and by 
they lose the clear consciousness which called for marching 
feet and obedient lives. You cannot keep the noble thought 
which you refuse to put into action. With Luther thought 
and feeling and burning deeds went together. In him the 
inner life and the outer were wedded. The inspiration 
dominated the activity. 

All these things have a certain element of timelessness. 
You cannot say that they belong distinctively to one age. 
They belong to every age. To read the Bible with eyes 
which penetrate beyond the incidental to the essential; to 

57 



[VJ-i] A LIVING BOOK IN A LIVING AGE 

receive the message of the living book into responsive lives; 
to fasten our very personality to the strength of the living 
Christ by a momentous act of trust, and then to go out and 
live in the light of this far-reaching experience: this is to 
receive Luther's secret into our own lives. More deeply it is 
to receive God's secret, for in response to such trust the 
Master of life himself enters our lives in a way undreamed of 
before. We too have new sight. We too have new insight. 
We too can go forth to serve with fresh and creative activity 
the age in which we live. 

It is one of the paradoxes of religious history that in the 
hour when Luther lost the pope he found God in a completer 
fashion than he had ever known him before. The Church 
had become an obstacle between man and God in the days 
of Luther. The Bible taught Luther how to brush aside 
every obstacle, papal and churchly, and to find the God who 
had been lost to view. 

DAILY READINGS 

Sixth Week, First Day 

The people gathered themselves together unto Aaron, 
and said unto him, Up, make us gods, which shall go be- 
fore us; for as for this Moses, the man that brought us 
up out of the land of Egypt, we know not what is become 
of him. And Aaron said unto them, Break off the golden 
rings, which are in the ears of your wives, of your sons, 
and of your daughters, and bring them unto me. . . . 
And he received it at their hand, and fashioned it with 
a graving tool, and made it a molten calf. . . . And 
when Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it; and 
Aaron made proclamation, and said, To-morrow shall be 
a feast to Jehovah. — Exodus 32: 1, 2, 4, 5. 

Moses was the representative of an ethical religion. In his 
absence the people fell away into a religion of idolatry. They 
did not cease to worship Jehovah, but they worshiped him 
by means of a calf of gold. They kept the same God, but 
they corrupted his worship. 

58 



MAN, BOOK, AND CHURCH [VI-2] 

Very much this sort of thing had happened to Christianity 
in the time of Luther. The old names had been kept, but 
the religion had been corrupted. The pope had been put in 
the place which belonged to God. Superstitious rites turned 
men's minds from the true and ethical worship. And if there 
was no visible golden calf, there was an invisible idol of 
avarice which was corrupting the worship. Aaron is said to 
have called the feast of the golden calf a feast to Jehovah. 
All too often has it happened that God has been worshiped 
in ways which expressly contradicted his nature and char- 
acter. The man who is clear-sighted enough to realize what 
it means when he is tempted to worship an invisible calf of 
gold will be saved from much tragic failure. 

Sixth Week, Second Day 

Then Amaziah the priest of Bethel sent to Jeroboam 
king of Israel, saying, Amos hath conspired against thee 
in the midst of the house of Israel: the land is not able 
to bear all his words. For thus Amos saith, Jeroboam 
shall die by the sword, and Israel shall surely be led 
away captive out of his land. Also Amaziah said unto 
Amos, O thou seer, go, flee thou away. — Amos 7: 10-12. 

Amaziah was the priest in charge at Bethel when Amos 
burst forth in his powerful and penetrating prophecy. Ama- 
ziah was the official priest of Jehovah. Amos was the prophet 
of Jehovah. You might expect the two to work in splendid 
harmony. As a matter of fact, Amaziah listened in amaze- 
ment, then in anxious wrath, to the words of Amos. He 
decided that the rough and uncouth prophet must be crushed. 
He took measures to arouse the royal hostility to the daunt- 
less prophet. He himself ordered him to leave Bethel. 

The experience of Amos in the eighth century before Christ 
was paralleled in the experience of Martin Luther in the 
sixteenth century after our Lord's coming. Luther was the 
prophet of God. But the highest official priests of the great 
churchly organization listened to him with amazed wrath and 

59 



[VI-3] A LIVING BOOK IN A LIVING AGE 

decided that he must be crushed. They sought to entangle 
him in a web of secular hostility. They ordered him to be 
silent. But the prophet of God spoke on. He did his great 
work in spite of the priests. 

Sixth Week, Third Day 

Woe unto you, ye blind guides, that say, Whosoever 
shall swear by the temple, it is nothing; but whosoever 
shall swear by the gold of the temple, he is a debtor. Ye 
fools and blind: for which is greater, the gold, or the 
temple that hath sanctified the gold? And, Whosoever 
shall swear by the altar, it is nothing; but whosoever shall 
swear by the gift that is upon it, he is a debtor. Ye blind: 
for which is greater, the gift, or the altar that sanctifieth 
the gift? — Matt. 23: 16-19. 

In these words Jesus appears as the critic of contemporary 
religion. The churchly leaders had the solemn responsibility 
of making clear and commanding the great matters of life 
and religion. But they themselves did not think clearly 
They themselves lacked moral and spiritual perspective. 
And so their teaching was confused. Those who should have 
been eyes for others were themselves blind. Those who 
should have been wise for others were themselves fools. 

The tragedy of a leadership which did not lead was the 
terrible thing which confronted Luther. In his day, too, 
sightless men proclaimed the way, and foolish men uttered 
words of assumed wisdom. To deliver men from false and 
inadequate leadership was the great matter in his day. It is 
a matter of genuine significance in ours. 

Sixth Week, Fourth Day 

And every day he was teaching in the temple; and 
every night he went out, and lodged in the mount that is 
called Olivet. And all the people came early in the morn- 
ing to him in the temple, to hear him. 

Now the feast of unleavened bread drew nigh, which is 
called the Passover. And the chief priests and the scribes 
sought how they might put him to death; for they feared 
the people.^Luke 21: 37-22: 2. 

60 



MAN, BOOK, AND CHURCH [VI-5] 

We have seen that the official representatives of religion 
came forth to crush Amos. Now we see the official representa- 
tives of religion planning to crush Jesus. They desire to do 
more than to silence him. They are plotting to kill him. The 
great Master of religion was met by the utter hostility of the 
accredited representatives of religion in his day. We are not 
surprised then that a church whose garments were trailed in 
the mire of a thousand vices planned to destroy the great 
prophet of the sixteenth century. There is a sort of malignant 
sacerdotal succession in the unethical priesthood of the world. 
And so it happens that the very organization created to be 
the support of vital religion may be its relentless foe. And 
you do not have to be dealing with some particular form of 
church to meet this problem. In any kind of ecclesiastical 
organization you can find men who begin by making some 
other interest more important than the Kingdom of God, 
and end by being hostile to the essential interests of that 
righteous Kingdom. 

Sixth Week, Fifth Day 

The chief priests therefore and the Pharisees gathered 
a council, and said, What do we? for this man doeth many 
signs. If we let him thus alone, all men will believe on 
him: and the Romans will come and take away both our 
place and our nation. But a certain one of them, Caia- 
phas, being high priest that year, said unto them, Ye 
know nothing at all, nor do ye take account that it is 
expedient for you that one man should die for the people, 
and that the whole nation perish not. — John 11: 47-50. 

Caiaphas was a man of magnetic personality and of forceful 
leadership. His position as high priest gave him authority. 
His own energetic, skilful methods caused his "words to be 
heard with attention. When the men of his group were most 
disturbed about the growing significance of Jesus, he made 
an astute and telling suggestion. It was evident that Jesus 
was a most dangerous man. Surely the common good must 
be considered before this one enthusiast. If killing him 

61 



[VI-6] A LIVING BOOK IN A LIVING AGE 

could take a desperate, dangerous element out of society, 
ought he not to be killed? The poison in the words of 
Caiaphas did its work. The hour of Jesus's treacherous death 
was brought one step nearer. The priest of priests was the 
arch foe of the Master of Religion. 

Luther, like his Master, felt the impact of the deadly hos- 
tility of the priest of priests. The pope wanted to secure the 
death of Luther. He worked to secure it. He felt that his 
own throne was threatened while Luther was alive. 

Sixth Week, Sixth Day 

But Jesus held his peace. And the high priest said 
unto him, I adjure thee by the living God, that thou tell 
us whether thou art the Christ, the Son of God. Jesus 
saith unto him, Thou hast said: nevertheless I say unto 
you, Henceforth ye shall see the Son of man sitting at the 
right hand of Power, and coming on the clouds of heaven. 
Then the high priest rent his garments, saying, He hath 
spoken blasphemy: what further need have we of wit- 
nesses? behold, now ye have heard, the blasphemy: what 
think ye? They answered and said, He is worthy *of 
death. — Matt. 26: 63-66. 

Here we see the high priest at the trial of Jesus. False 
witnesses have evidently been futile. Caiaphas gathers him- 
self for a supreme effort. Looking Jesus straight in the eye, 
his own cool, malignant eyes flashing with cruel energy, he 
speaks in the name of God, asking Jesus if he is the Christ. 
An ugly, deadly insight prompted the question. It was a ques- 
tion with which Jesus would not play, and which he would 
answer, though that answer brought about his death. With 
unhesitating power he declared himself and Caiaphas used 
the words to seal his doom. Here again the priest of priests 
is the leader in the plot — now successful — to slay the one 
man whose presence made religion supremely vital in the 
world. Little did Caiaphas know that the death would do 
what the life alone would never have been able to do, as the 
religion of Jesus swept out to conquer the world. 

62 



MAN, BOOK, AND CHURCH [VI-7] 

Luther followed his Master loyally. It was not asked of 
him that he give his life by dying. This Wyclif had done; 
this Hus had done; to this fate Rome would have brought 
Luther. But the providence which rules men's lives had 
other plans for him. It is perfectly clear that he possessed 
the spirit of last great sacrifice. He did not expect to sur- 
vive his final hostility to the pope. 

Sixth Week, Seventh Day 

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, that killeth the prophets, and 
stoneth them that are sent unto her! how often would 
I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen 
gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would 
not! — Matt. 23: 37. 

The city of God failed to recognize the Son of God. The 
Church of God has often failed to recognize the messengers 
of God. So it was w T hen Luther came and so it was in a real 
measure when Wesley came. The power to recognize God's 
prophets when they come is a gift for which we may all 
well pray. There is a picture in Revelation of the Church as 
a bride adorned for her husband. The figure is complete in 
its suggestion of readiness and welcome. Each age receives 
its messages. Each age receives its messengers. What kind 
of a reception does our Jerusalem give to those who speak 
for God? 

PERSONAL SUGGESTIONS 

This week's study makes one thing very definitely clear — • 
that is, the possibility of being a churchman without being 
a Christian. And the question arises, How may I be sure 
that I am a member of the Kingdom of God as well as a mem- 
ber of the Church? We must find the answer to that question 
where Luther found it, in a personal appropriation of that 
which the Master of Religion offers to us. As we trust him 
and obey him we shall find our citizenship in the Kingdom of 
God. 

63 



„ 



CHAPTER VII 

The Man, the Book, and the 

Emperor 

COMMENT FOR THE WEEK 

We are all familiar with the statement credited to Louis 
XIV, "I am the State." Charles V, who sat on the throne of 
the Holy Roman Empire in those testing days of Luther, 
could claim no such absolute authority as did that gilded and 
brilliant monarch, Louis XIV of France, but he ruled over 
vaster domains than any man in Europe since Charlemagne, 
and he held the proudest secular title in the world. Charles 
was master of Spain, lord of the Netherlands, and at the 
age of about twenty-one he was crowned Emperor. In theory 
the pope was the chief spiritual lord in the world, the Em- 
peror was its chief temporal lord. What the imperial office 
lacked in definite authority, it made up in tremendous dig- 
nity. And it did have far-flung and genuine authority, as 
well as a most imperial place in the imagination of all peoples. 

When, in 1521, the young Charles came to Germany to 
receive the imperial crown, the land was torn by the great 
religious controversy which we have seen inaugurated by the 
protest of Luther. The pacification of Germany, torn by 
this dissension, was one of the first and one of the most im- 
portant tasks of the young Emperor. Charles V never wore 
his heart on his sleeve. He was a cold, reserved, astute man 
who controlled others without any very full revelation of his 
own motives. 

If he had one enthusiasm it was probably for the Church. 

64 






MAN, BOOK, AND EMPEROR [VII-cJ 

He saw the need of reform. He wanted reform. But he hated 
revolution. He wanted no attack on the papacy. He wanted 
no attack on the authority of the Church. He wanted no 
attack on the sacraments. As quickly as he understood the 
nature of Luther's protest, he was sure to be its foe. But 
Charles V was a consummate politician, and his political 
motives were very deep in his life. He was a man who would 
hold to a purpose, but he would be guided in carrying it out 
by all sorts of political motives. In the very nature of the 
case the Emperor watched the power of the pope with a 
jealous eye, and, loyal son of the Church as he was, Charles 
had no desire to see the pope too powerful. He felt at one 
time that that audacious German monk Luther might be of 
use in his political game of curbing the pope. But if it came 
to a final choice of allegiance, Charles was always with the 
pope rather than against him. 

It was decided to call a great assembly of the German 
princes. And here, among other matters, Luther and his 
movement were to be considered. This assembly was the 
famous Diet of Worms. And to it Luther was at length 
summoned with a safeguard from the Emperor. Luther 
could not forget John Hus and the imperial promise of 
protection which had not prevented that noble Bohemian 
from being burned at Constance more than a hundred years 
before. But Luther felt that he must answer the imperial 
summons. If it had been an assembly of devils instead of 
an assembly of German princes he would have had no choice, 
judging from his own violent and picturesque utterance. 

We now come to the most dramatic and momentous 
moment in Luther's active life. He was a peasant trained 
to bend before high authority. All his instincts were those 
of pliant obedience when the august voices of his rulers 
spoke. He was summoned into the glittering presence of 
such a brilliant assembly of wide-reaching political and eccle- 
siastical power as would have dazzled and awed any man. 

6 5 



. 



[VII-c] A LIVING BOOK IN A LIVING AGE 

He had begun to realize what it meant to be alone. The 
pope was against him. The organized Church was against 
him. Would the Emperor be against him, too? And would 
the organized forces of the empire be turned to crush him? 

History has few moments of more thrilling quality than 
that when at last Luther stood at bay. He realized that he 
had been called to recant, and not to be given a sympathetic 
hearing. The weight of Church and State bent upon him 
with crushing power. Could he resist the pressure? Could 
one man defy the world? He squared his shoulders. He 
stood steady under the awful weight. He rested his case 
upon the Bible. He refused to retract his essential positions 
unless convinced from the Scriptures that he was wrong. 
The power of the world flashed around him. There he stood • 
in solitary marvelous strength. He could do no other. The 
life within was stronger than all external pressure. And 
when he went forth he staggered under the weight of the 
w T orld he was carrying into a new day. 

On his return journey to Wittenberg friends of Luther 
snatched him away out of danger. Under the ban of the 
empire and the ban of the pope, it must have seemed as if 
all was lost. 

Charles V, however, found that Luther had an amazing 
popular hold on Germany. Great princes were friendly to 
him. Vast numbers of people idolized him. The land was 
seething with his doctrine and the sense of a new life which 
he was spreading abroad. 

If Charles V had had no other interest, he- might have 
centered his attention upon the crushing of Luther, and 
had he done this in the earlier years of the Reformation 
it is difficult to see how he could have been prevented from 
achieving his end. But Charles had many plans. He had 
his great rivalry with Francis I of France to consider. Later 
he had wars with the Turks to engross his mind. It 
seemed as if there was always something to divert his atten- 

66 



MAN, BOOK, AND EMPEROR [VII-c] 

tion from Luther and his movement, until at last that move- 
ment became too strong for the imperial crushing. 

When at last, in 1541, Charles abdicated his throne, he 
was a disillusioned and disappointed man. He had never 
succeeded in unifying Germany. The Reformation had swept 
in triumph past any opposition he had summoned. Looking 
back, he wished that he had secured the death of Luther at 
that long distant day when Luther was in his power. He had 
been shrewd and skilful. He had been the center of all eyes 
in his brilliant imperial life. But he had never understood 
his age. He had never understood Luther. He had never 
understood Germany. And his face was not set forward 
toward the future. It was turned backward toward the past. 
When he retired into a monastery the event was symbolical. 
The ideals and ideas for which he stood were never to have 
unchallenged sway in the world again. 

It is not the victory of Luther which stands out in the whole 
story, however. It is the daring of Luther. It is that high 
adventure when he moved out with a world against him. It is 
the figure of that lone man at Worms, carrying his loyalty 
to his inner life to the utmost limit of personal risk. The 
living book had indeed poured its vital message into the 
heart of a man who received its full power. The evangelical 
message of the Bible lived in Luther. And that made him 
stronger than all the crushing power at the disposal of 
Charles V. The whole story of Luther's strength in resisting 
almost overwhelming pressure from without, rings with a 
certain deep note of human experience which appeals to us 
all. How we have felt life pressing in upon .us! How we 
have felt it dashing against our aspirations, our purposes, 
and our best desires ! It has not been so dreadfully hard a 
pressure as Luther felt. There is something almost unique 
about that. But it is the same sort of experience, and some- 
how we feel very near to the monk of Wittenberg as we read 
the story. 

6 7 



[VII-i] A LIVING BOOK IN A LIVING AGE 

Then it comes home to us that Luther's secret may be 
ours. And this tale of the sixteenth century suddenly be- 
comes a matter of vital meaning for this torn and struggling 
and magnificently heroic age in which we live. The thing 
that held Luther steady against pope and Emperor is a good 
thing for a man in the trenches. It is a good thing for the 
man who must go "over the top." It is a good thing for the 
man who is withstanding the hard siege of every day. The 
courage to withstand does not belong to any one age. It is 
the need of every period. And the living contact with the 
living Christ through the gripping power of a great trust 
still makes a man stronger in inner strength than all the 
forces which press upon him from without. 

DAILY READINGS 
Seventh Week, First Day 

And Moses went out from Pharaoh, and entreated 
Jehovah. And Jehovah did according to the word of 
Moses; and he removed the swarms of flies from Pharaoh, 
from his servants, and from his people; there remained 
not one. And Pharaoh hardened his heart this time also, 
and he did not let the people go. — Exodus 8: 30-32. 

Here we have a fragment of the account of the struggle 
of an ancient religious leader with a powerful prince. The 
king of Egypt is on one side. The servant of Jehovah is 
on the other. God's own resources are enlisted in the fight 
and although again and again Pharaoh hardens his heart, 
and steels his purpose to resist, at last he is forced to the 
great surrender. 

We are likely to see in Moses, as we read the story, a 
titanic figure wielding almost irresistible power. But we 
must remember that every step of his leadership was a great 
venture of faith in the unseen. The towering size of Moses 
is really the size of his faith. And we may be his peers in 
faith in the strong invisible God, who is mightier than all 
his foes. 

68 



MAN, BOOK, AND EMPEROR [VII-2] 

Seventh Week, Second Day 

And Ahab said to Elijah, Hast thou found me, O mine 
enemy? And he answered, I have found thee, because 
thou hast sold thyself to do that which is evil in the sight 
of Jehovah. — I Kings 20: 21. 

Moses in the thirteenth century B. C. contended with the 
Pharaoh of Egypt. Elijah in the ninth century B. C. con- 
tended with Ahab, king of Israel. Very often the prophet 
has met the king as a foe. When the king becomes an evil- 
doer, God is against him and God's prophet must be against 
him, too. The prophet represents something higher than 
the authority of an earthly king. 

You get this very quality of prophetic leadership expressed 
once and again in Martin Luther's life. He does not measure 
his message by the standard of kings. He measures kings by 
the standards of his message. And when they are found 
wanting he speaks out for God. 

The Diet of Worms represents no mere isolated event in 
Luther's life. His brave action in the presence of the Em- 
peror is profoundly typical. Like Elijah, he had a message 
which made him stronger than any king. 

Seventh Week, Third Day 

And Jehovah spake again unto Ahaz, saying, Ask thee 
a sign of Jehovah thy* God. . . But Ahaz said, I will 
not ask, neither will I tempt Jehovah. And he said, Hear 
ye now, O house of David: Is it a small thing for you 
to weary men, that ye will weary my God also? There- 
fore the Lord himself will give you a sign: behold a 
virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his 
name Immanuel. . . . Before the child shall know to 
refuse the evil, and choose the good, the land whose two 
kings thou abhorrest shall be forsaken. — Isa. 7: 10-14, 16. 

Now we are in the eighth century B. C. Isaiah is dealing 
with the weak king, Ahaz. The king tries to disguise his 
weakness by making it appear as reverence. He tries to 
depreciate courage by making it appear to be over-boldness, 

69 



[VII-4] A LIVING BOOK IN A LIVING AGE 

which has turned into irreverent audacity. Isaiah cuts 
through his defences. He speaks brief, tense, strong words. 
You feel at once that Isaiah is the strong man and Ahaz the 
weakling. And Isaiah makes you feel that it is God who 
makes him strong. He makes no claim that his words are 
his own words. They are the words of Jehovah. 

Luther's relation to the secular power in critical periods of 
his life gives you this same impression of a man strong in a 
strength which is not his own. He has access to an Emperor 
so much more powerful than Charles that the man on the 
throne of the Holy Roman Empire does not have power to 
make him afraid. 

Seventh Week, Fourth Day 

Now when Herod saw Jesus, he was exceeding glad: 
for he was of a long time desirous to see him, because he 
had heard concerning him; and he hoped to see some 
miracle done by him. And he questioned him in many 
words; but he answered him nothing. And the chief 
priests and the scribes stood, vehemently accusing him. 
And Herod with his soldiers set him at nought, and 
mocked him, and arraying him in gorgeous apparel sent 
him back to Pilate.— Luke 23: 8-1 1. 

"It is intolerable to be scoffed at and disdained and made 
light of, when you are right and the man who scorns you is 
wrong," burst out an ardent young reformer after an un- 
happy, bitter experience. 'Yes, it is^ intolerable," was the 
reply of his wise adviser, "and yet the best man who ever 
lived endured it." 

Herod was the ruler. Jesus was at the bar of justice. And 
with mocking mirth the scornful, jesting king cast insult 
upon the Galilean. Yet Jesus was the judge that day, and 
Herod was the judged. The secular ruler was judged from 
an invisible throne of the spirit where Jesus reigned. 

In many ages, when Christian heroes have stood before 
the relentless cruelty of secular kings, their way has been 

70 



MAN, BOOK, AND EMPEROR [VII-5] 

easier because they have remembered their Master's experi- 
ence so long ago. 

The conflict of Luther in the sixteenth century is part of 
an age-long struggle with the secular power which has not 
submitted itself to the leadership which truly represents the 
will of God. 

Seventh Week, Fifth Day 

And Pilate spake unto them again, desiring to release 
Jesus; but they shouted, saying, 'Crucify, crucify him. 
And he said unto them a third time, Why, what evil hath 
this man done? . . . But they were urgent with loud 
voices. .• . . And Pilate gave sentence that what they 
asked for should be done. — Luke 23: 20-24. 

Again we see Jesus on trial before a secular power, and we 
see the master of the Roman tribunal condemning Jesus to 
death. It might seem the very seal of failure on the work 
of Jesus — he is unable to withstand the onslaughts of his 
foes; he goes away to death. The first important thing 
is to see that he was completely loyal. Herod could not 
mock him out of his loyalty; Pilate's power did not frighten 
him; he made no concession. His preliminary victory was 
that he held faithfulness dearer than life. 

Luther faced the same testing experience again and again. 
If he never became a physical martyr he was a martyr in spirit 
through years. For he put his cause before his life and took 
every risk. Like his Master he could not be turned from 
his task by any secular power. 

Seventh Week, Sixth Day 

And Agrippa said unto Paul, Thou art "permitted to 
speak for thyself. Then Paul stretched forth his hand, 
and made his defence. . . . And Paul said, I would to 
God, that whether with little or with much, not thou 
only, but also all that hear me this day, might become 
such as I am, except these bonds.- — Acts 26: 1, 29. 

Another Christian leader stands in the presence of a secular 

7i 



[VII-7] A LIVING BOOK IN A LIVING AGE 

authority. Paul is before Agrippa. On the one hand is the 
representative of imperial Rome; on the other the outstand- 
ing preacher of a despised and persecuted sect. It wo^ld 
take a wise eye to see that Paul represented the future and 
that Agrippa would be remembered only because he heard 
Paul speak. Paul was steady, well-poised, infinitely earnest, 
and full of friendly solicitude for the good of those who 
heard him. He was easily the master of the scene in his 
inherent, dominant, noble manhood. 

Paul was very near to Luther, and the Pauline teacher 
of the sixteenth century must have received great comfort 
from the story of the strong, steady faithfulness of his fore- 
runner in Christian prophecy so long ago. Both Paul and 
Luther knew that they had more to give to kings than kings 
would ever give to them. 



Seventh Week, Seventh Day 

Before governors and kings shall ye stand fof my sake, 
for a testimony unto them. — Mark 13: 9. 

The eye of Jesus is flashing out over the future. He sees 
his disciples in the presence of the powerful of the earth. He 
sees times of testing and times of hardship. And he sees 
times of victory. 

It is simply true that history glistens with the brightness 
of the courage of Christians as they have faced stern and 
strong secular power unafraid. The early centuries of perse- 
cution set an amazing standard of courageous faithfulness. 
And age after age has made its contribution to the number 
of those who were unmoved when powerful potentates set 
themselves against the triumph of the Kingdom of God. 
Every century since Jesus came to the world has had its 
own heroes of invincible purpose in the presence of royal 
hostility. 

72 



MAN, BOOK, AND EMPEROR [VII-7] 

So the story of Luther and Charles fits into a great series 
of stories of royal opposition and Christian strength. 

PERSONAL SUGGESTIONS 

We live in a republic. What has all this tale of Luther 
and an Emperor to do with us? A great deal if we stop 
to think. Public opinion is often the emperor before whom 
we crouch and cower. The things the crowd will say may 
make us tremble more than Luther trembled in the presence 
of Charles. Whatever the thing is in this world about us 
the fear of which makes us hesitate to be true to God and 
our deepest lives — that thing must be conquered. And the 
way of conquest we may find where Luther found the way 
of power. 



73 



CHAPTER VIII 

The Man, the Book, and the 

People 

COMMENT FOR THE WEEK 

James Russell Lowell once suggested that there was social 
dynamite in the New Testament/if the people ever came to 
realize .its implications. 

The story of the emerging of the people and of their for- 
ward movement to a place of dominance is one of the most 
fascinating and significant stories in all the world. And the 
study of the Reformation comes to a point of intense interest 
when we ask, What was its relation to the emancipation of 
the people? Did Luther see the meaning of the social dyna- 
mite in the New Testament? Did he give sympathy and 
aid to the people in their aspirations? Does he have a place 
among those who have helped the people to come to their own? 

Martin Luther himself was a peasant and the son of a 
peasant. By birth and early life he was a man of the people. 
He spoke their speech, he knew their life, he understood their 
privations and their ways, he was aware of their hopes and 
fears. His own speech always smacked of the soil and a part 
of his power lay in his ability to speak in direct and compelling 
fashion to the popular mind. 

More than this, the central act of his life had the heart 
of democracy in it. His tremendous protest against the 
organized Church and the organized State in the name of 
the individual and his direct relation to God was an expres- 
sion of the very genius of religious democracy, and its imme- 

74 



MAN, BOOK, AND PEOPLE [VIII-c] 

diate corollary was political democracy. When you put the 
solemn sacredness of the integrity of the individual life over 
against the great social solidarities, you can come to live 
in a new world. Luther was undoubtedly one of the most 
significant of the men who created that modern type of life 
where the people have been coming to their own in such 
wonderful fashion. His example was like a beacon light, 
showing the individual man everywhere that he had a right 
to be true to himself and to assert his power. 

The common people of Germany were not slow to see all 
this. They felt that he was one of them. They felt that 
under his leadership ancient wrongs could be righted and a 
better day could be produced. He became their great hero. 
They were ready to rally around him with the completest 
loyalty. 

Then came the peasants' uprising of 1523. It was not 
the first of the uprisings of the peasants. Held down under 
a heavy yoke, the victims of harsh and cruel wrong, once 
and again the peasants broke forth in the endeavor to better 
their condition. But the activity of Luther pat new hope 
into them. They set about a movement which would really 
secure some of those rights for which they had striven in 
vain. Their preliminary declaration was one to command 
the respect of fair-minded men. The wrongs from which 
they wished to be delivered were real wrongs. The rights 
they claimed were true rights of men who were to have any 
real future. Luther felt a genuine measure of sympathy 
with them at this stage of the movement. 

But Luther was never a political reformer. He had an 
instinct, whose wisdom we cannot seriously question, that 
he was in the world to do one thing. If he tried to do every- 
thing, his whole movement would collapse and he would do 
nothing. If he tried to do one thing, he had genuine hope 
of success. He was first and last and always a man of 
religion. To make a place in the world for the true evangeli- 

75 



[VIII-c] A LIVING BOOK IN A LIVING AGE 

cal type of religious experience and life he considered his one 
absolute mission. As the peasants' uprising moved on, 
there were murmurings everywhere. The foes of the Refor- 
mation were not slow to declare that it meant anarchy, that 
it meant the overthrow of all the stable and solid and ancient 
sanctions of life. Men who had believed in Luther began 
to eye him with suspicion. Then there came the time when 
excesses appeared in the peasants' uprising. Luther's whole 
movement seemed endangered by red-eyed, passionate men 
who were ready to shake the foundations of things to secure 
their desire. Luther felt that the only way to save the 
Reformation was to sever it absolutely from the political 
movement of the peasants. He looked with utter horror 
upon the wilder excesses of the movement. Then he pre- 
pared to act. 

He acted unhesitatingly. With unmistakably stern and 
rugged language he advised that the peasants be relentlessly 
crushed. His voice became hard and brutal as he burst 
out against those who were endangering the movement which 
was more precious to him than his life. The German princes 
w r ere not slow in taking Luther's advice. The movement 
of the peasants was drowned in blood. If the peasants had 
committed excesses, they were met in turn by the cruel 
excesses of the men who came against them. They were 
beaten to the ground. Multitudes of them perished. The 
spirit was crushed out of those who remained. Their condi- 
tion was worse than it was before the uprising. Hope 
perished out of their hearts and generation after generation 
of the peasant class lived on unrelieved. 

The possibility that Germany would realize the political 
corollaries of the Reformation never became an actuality. 
Indeed, reaction rather than reformation held the people. 

From this time on Luther was no more the hero of the 
peasant class. They had been disillusioned. Their idol 
had fallen. A man of their own group had spoken the word 

7 6 



MAN, BOOK, AND PEOPLE [VIII-c] 

in obedience to which they had been crushed. They did not 
forget, and they did not forgive. 

One of the most important things about the whole expe- 
rience was its effect on Luther himself. He, too, was disil- 
lusioned. He, too, had suffered a change deep in his heart. 
From this time forth he distrusted the common people. 
From this time forth he believed with increasing intensity 
that the great and good things of life must be handed down 
to the common people by wise and able princes and leaders. 
He became a paternalist in his thinking. He did not see that 
the common people will respond to a great trust, and out of 
their own lives produce the greatest and safest leadership and 
in the use of power become the basis of a true and permanent 
stability. He gave expression to his reactionary views with 
his customary violence and he helped to fasten upon Germany 
the paternal theory of life. 

We must judge a man by the standards and the possibili- 
ties of his own age. We must not utter harsh words of 
condemnation because of standards which had not vet become 
a part of the world's life. So quite candidly we will ask the 
question, Could Luther, living in his age and with his experi- 
ence and interests, have taken another course? 

When we put the matter in this way, it is difficult to deny 
that if Luther had tried to be both a political reformer and 
a religious leader he would have failed in both. It is true 
that he succeeded in doing one thing, simply because he did 
not try to do evervthing. He had to be true to the funda- 
mental meaning and genius of his life. And that centered 
in his work as the prophet of a vital religion freed from 
ecclesiastical tyranny. 

But when we have admitted this, a wave of poignant 
regret comes over us whenever we think of the crushing of 
the peasants with Luther's approval and at Luther's word. 
If he did not help them, could he not have avoided becoming 
one of their oppressors? The reply seems to be that his 

77 



[VIII-c] A LIVING BOOK IN A LIVING AGE 

temper and quality being what they were, he could not be 
neutral. The very violent and powerful energy which made 
him a successful reformer led to his remorseless language 
in this crisis. Then it is probably true that only unmistak- 
able and emphatic action cut his movement free from the 
suspicion that it was a movement of lawlessness which 
endangered the whole social fabric. The more one studies 
the situation, the harder it is to see how he could have taken 
another path. 

But it yet remains that Luther's relation to the peasants 
is the darkest, saddest, most tragic thing in his career. Hope 
was blighted in eager human hearts. The sunrise was changed 
to midnight for men who thought that they saw the coming 
of the new day. If Luther could have found a way to steady 
and help the peasants, the whole history of Germany might 
have been different. 

We must frankly say that the book Luther loved had 
much for the peasants which he never saw or understood. 

The living book is not a book whose message heads up 
in benevolent princes giving guidance to a people incapable 
of functioning in their own right. New light was indeed 
to break from God's Word regarding the relation of religion 
to the unfolding life of the people. Though he knew it not, 
in this regard Luther's face was turned toward the past and 
not toward the future. 

We cannot fail to see, however, that in the larger life of 
the world his action at Worms was more significant than his 
attitude in the peasants' war. At Worms he stood forth a 
typical spiritual democrat before the days of democracy. 
At W T orms he represented the rights of the individual against 
every encroaching power of Church and State. At Worms 
his face was toward the future, full of the light of the great 
days to come. And the world will remember Worms when 
the peasants' war with its sad and cruel tragedy has sunk 
into oblivion. But as we say this the sad and bitter faces 

78 



MAN, BOOK, AND PEOPLE [VIII-i] 

of the disappointed peasants come before us. And we are 
glad that we live in a day when we are not asked to make 
Luther's choice. The implications of the Gospel for the 
common man are now moving forth to take possessio.n of 
the world. 

It is a relief to turn from the peasants' war to consider the 
fashion in which Luther remained a man of the people to 
the end of his career. The fundamental, sincere, human 
stuff of him was never affected by his relation to princes. He 
remained the virile, rugged, sincere man out of the soil of his 
people's life, with a sense for the tang of reality and a hearty 
responsiveness to all the fundamental human experiences. 

He was always ready to take risks and he never compro- 
mised out of personal fear. Men high in authority felt the 
lash of his rebuke. He was eager for the good of all the 
people in his land. The voice with which he spoke was 
always a voice which any German could understand. Be- 
cause the genius of his people was alive in him, he came to 
a leadership which has been awarded to few men. He was 
an example of the power of the common life to produce a 
great man. 

DAILY READINGS 

Eighth Week, First Day 

And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine 
eyes from you; yea, when ye make many prayers, I will 
not hear: your hands are full of blood. Wash you, make 
you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before 
mine eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do well; seek justice, 
relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the 
widow. — Isa. i: 15-17. 

In the eighth century B.C. Isaiah the prophet told the men 
of Jerusalem in unmistakable language that social wrong 
can shut man off from God. Jehovah turns with loathing from 
the prayers of unjust men. The oppressor, the man who 
exploits the orphans and the widow, all the strong who take 

79 



J 



[VIII-2] A LIVING BOOK IN A LIVING AGE 

advantage of the weak, are hateful in the eyes of God. A 
man cannot keep true religion and ignore its social expression. 
The petitions of the oppressor do not reach the throne of 
God. 

If the men who oppressed the peasants in the sixteenth 
century had realized the implications of such words as these, 
a speedy hearing would have been given to the lowly people 
who came to them with a list of grievances. The living book 
is never on the side of the oppressor. It is always on the side 
of the oppressed. 

Eighth Week, Second Day 

And I said, Hear, I pray you, ye heads of Jacob, and 
rulers of the house of Israel: is it not for you to know 
justice? ye who hate the good, and love the evil; who 
pluck off their skin from off them, and their flesh from 
off their bones; who also eat the flesh of my people, and 
flay their skin from off them, and break their bones, and 
chop them in pieces, as for the pot, and as flesh within 
the caldron. Then shall they cry unto Jehovah, but he 
will not answer them; yea, he will hide his face from 
them at that time, according as they have wrought evil 
in their doings. — Micah 3: 1-4. 

Here is another voice lifted in the eighth century B. C. 
and crying out with passionate intensity against the oppress- 
ing princes wjbo grind the poor into the dust. Micah is a 
prophet whose voice fairly breaks with his passionate con- 
demnation of social injustice. He, too, declares with solemn, 
stern seriousness that God will not hear the prayers of the 
perpetrator of social wrong. Here the poor have a defender. 
Here the weak find a voice lifted in their behalf. Here the 
defenseless have a powerful advocate whose words cut like 
swords. And he speaks in the name of Jehovah. He speaks 
for the God who cares for the poor and the men and women 
and children who are in extreme need. The heart of this 
message is that God himself is a God of social passion, who 
hates injustice and oppression with an undying hatred. 

80 









MAN, BOOK, AND PEOPLE [VIII-3I 

Eighth Week, Third Day 

The word of Jehovah came unto me again, saying, 
What mean ye, that ye use this proverb concerning the 
land of Israel, saying, The fathers have eaten sour grapes, 
and the children's teeth are set on edge? As I live, saith 
the Lord Jehovah, ye shall not have occasion any more 
to use this proverb in Israel. Behold, all souls are mine; 
as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is 
mine: the soul that sinneth, it shall die. — Ezek. 18: 1-4. 

Here we come upon a passage of prophecy which opens 
vistas that fairly dazzle us. In Israel the sense of individ- 
uality was lost in the mass. Men felt that they were simply 
part of a vast entanglement in which the individual suffered 
for sins which he had never committed. The fathers had 
eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth were set on edge. 
Over against this the prophet puts another conception which 
he brings alive with God's own sanction. He speaks for 
God as he says, 'All souls are mine. The soul that sinneth 
it shall die." A man must meet the consequences of his own 
sin. He does not have to meet the penalty of the sins of 
others. Every separate soul belongs to God, and stands 
on its own rights. Here is a charter of nobility for all 
humanity. Peasant and prince stand side by side in the light 
of this tremendous pronouncement. "All souls are mine" — 
the peasant in any land and in any age has a new light in 
his eye when he perceives the significance of this great word. 

Eighth Week, Fourth Day 

All things therefore whatsoever ye would that men 
should do unto you, even so do ye also unto them: for 
this is the law and the prophets. — Matt. 7: -12. 

Here we have one of those sentences in whose tense power 
Jesus sums up a world of meaning. It has implications so 
far-reaching that we have not begun to fathom them. And 
the important thing about this golden rule of life is that it is 
all-inclusive. It leaves nobody out. It leaves out no per- 

81 



i 



[VIII-5] A LIVING BOOK IN A LIVING AGE 

sonality in the universe. God himself keeps the golden rule 
and that is the reason why Jesus Christ came into the world 
to live and die and break into life again for men. And the 
poorest, weakest, most despised man is included in the golden 
rule. It opens new doors of hope for him. It calls new light 
of sunrise over eastern hills. 

No wonder that in the age of the rediscovery of the Bible 
German peasants felt that rusty doors were creaking on their 
hinges, and preparing to open wide. When the words of 
Jesus are fully obeyed, there will be no oppressed and down- 
trodden class. 

Eighth Week, Fifth Day 

In that hour came the disciples unto Jesus, saying, Who 
then is greatest in the kingdom of heaven? And he called 
to him a little child, and set him in the midst of them, 
and said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye turn, and be- 
come as little children, ye shall in no wise enter into the 
kingdom of heaven. — Matt. 18: 1-3. 

The disciples wanted a standard of greatness in God's 
Kingdom. Jesus flashed back a condition of entrance into 
the Kingdom. The simple, childlike mind alone can be 
received, he declared, into the eternal Kingdom. Artificial 
distinctions and oppressive ambitions do not belong in that 
great Kingdom, and the man who causes a poor humble and 
defenceless one to stumble, would be better at the bottom 
of the sea with a millstone fastened about his neck. Like 
the sudden gleam of a sword sharp to do deadly execution, 
came the words of Jesus in condemnation of the oppressors 
of the little ones who have no strength to defend them- 
selves. He would not forget them, he made their case his 

m 

own. 

Eighth Week, Sixth Day 

Neither be ye called masters: for one is your master, 
even the Christ. But he that is greatest among you shall 
be your servant. And whosoever shall exalt himself shall 

82 



MAN, BOOK, AND PEOPLE [VIII-7] 

be humbled; and whosoever shall humble himself shall be 
exalted. — Matt. 23: 10-12. 

The kingliness of service as expressed by Jesus gives a man 
a completely new standard in respect of toil. And quite a 
new perspective is created about life as a man comes to realize 
that the great of the world are the servants of the world. 
'What can I get men to do for me?' was the greatest ques- 
tion of the old exploiting ages. "What can I do for men?" 
is the question where Christianity has really mastered the 
conscience and taken possession of the motives. 

Such a message had enough energy in it to change most 
of the relations of princes and peasants in Germany if its 
meaning had been fully realized. But the eyes of many were 
holden, for, by a curious transposition of meaning, to a 
good many men the Church's use of the word servant had 
made it mean a man who was served. But the spirit of 
service throbbed and palpitated in the New Testament. Some 
day that spirit would make itself understood by men. 
Then there would be a new day for the peasants of the world. 

Eighth Week, Seventh Day 

But when the Son of man shall come in his glory, and 
all the angels with him, then shall he sit on the throne 
of his glory: and before him shall be gathered all the 
nations: and he shall separate them one from another, 
as the shepherd separateth the sheep* from the goats; 
and he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats 
on the left. Then shall the King say unto them on his 
right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the 
kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the 
wopld: for I was hungry, and ye gave me to eat; I was 
thirsty, and ye gave me drink; I was a stranger, and ye 
took me in; naked, and ye clothed me; I was sick, and 
ye visited me; I was in prison, and ye came unto me. 
Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when 
saw we thee hungry, and fed thee? or athirst, and gave 
thee drink? And when saw we thee a stranger, and took 
thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? And when saw we 
thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? And the 

83 



[VIII-7] A LIVING BOOK IN A LIVING AGE 

King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto 
you, Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of these my brethren, 
even these least, ye did it unto me. — Matt. 25: 31-40. 

This powerful picture in the words of Jesus of the judgment 
of the nations gives a great and far-reaching standard. That 
standard is the treatment of the poor and oppressed and needy 
and downcast. Their case is the case of Christ. What is 
done for them is done for him. Eternal issues are determined 
by the fashion in which you treat those who cannot help 
themselves. 

That fine story of the converted gladiator whose only 
service was to carry men across a steep ford comes to our 
minds. One dark night he carried a child over the river. 
The winds and the waters raged about him. The child was 
strangely heavy. At last after desperate efforts he staggered 
up the opposite bank. Then suddenly in a burst of glory 
he knew that he had carried the Christ-child over the river, 
and after that they called him Saint Christopher (the Christ 
bearer). 

The poor, the needy, the oppressed, those bent down by 
injustice, those held in hard places and in miserable condi- 
tions are upon the heart of Christ. And he puts their care 
upon the conscience of the world. 

PERSONAL SUGGESTIONS 

We have considered Luther's attitude toward the rights 
of the common people. We have seen something of the 
spirit of the Bible, especially of the spirit of Jesus, toward 
those who have had least opportunity. Now we com£ to 
a telling, pressing matter. What is our attitude? Is there 
a wall between our lives and those of common men? Do 
we understand everyday people, and sense their tremendous 
qualities? Do we know how much we can receive from them 
as well as how much we can be worth to them? Are we 
ready to stand up for them when they need our help? 

84 



CHAPTER IX 

* 

The Man, the Book, and the . 
German Language 

COMMENT FOR THE WEEK 

A man who was a student and a thinker, and was not 
without his claim to technical scholarship, sat beside his 
cheerful library fire, with a close friend in the chair opposite 
him. The electric lights had been turned off. The blaze 
in the open fireplace burned up brightly, sending a warm 
glow out over the room. The man looked out at the shelves 
on shelves of volumes of all sizes, lining the walls of the room 
on every side. A light of affection came into his eyes and 
he turned to his friend, 'How books do talk to you," he 
said, 'and what wonderful things they tell you!' "Yes," 
replied the friend, "they do talk to you if you understand 
their language." 

It was one of the great achievements of Martin Luther 
that he made the Bible talk German. His was not the first 
translation of the Bible by means of German words. But 
his was the first translation which caught the living spirit 
of German speech, its human vigor, its honest, rugged energy, 
its very genius and power. 

Martin Luther never forgot what he owed ,to the Bible. 
The most vital and commanding voices to which he ever 
listened spoke to him out of the Old Testament and the New. 
He wanted the living book to become the possession of living 
men. He wanted the living book to become the possession 
of German men. He knew that there was one effective and 

8; 



[IX-c] A LIVING BOOK IN A LIVING AGE 

far-reaching way. If the Bible could capture the very tang 
and individual quality of German speech, if it could speak 
through the vernacular which the German recognized as 
his own, with all its intimate and gripping associations, 
then the Bible would become indeed the possession of the 
German people. A wooden translation would be worse than 
no translation. A mere substitution of German words for 
the words of the text would mean little enough. The Bible 
must be thought in German. The Bible must be felt in 
German. The Bible must so deeply live in a German life 
that it could pour itself forth in German speech. 

And the German who did the work must have a sense of 
all^the subtle associations of words, he must have a sense 
of the atmosphere a word and a phrase carry with them, 
he must have a sense of the music of words, of their grip, 
their stinging energy, and their haunting power. He must 
be a master of words, who knew how to bend them to his 
purpose. He must not be a slave of words, who was the 
victim of the phrase which happened to come into his mind. 
With a great general's power he must mobilize the resources 
of German speech for the full and mastering expression of 
that rich and glowing message which lives in the Bible. The 
man who could do this was Martin Luther. The man who 
did this was Martin Luther. And the achievement had 
wide implications which he himself did not then know. 

After the Diet of Worms, when Luther was caught away 
into the enforced safety of his pseudo-captivity at the Wart- 
burg, he had hours and days and weeks which he could em- 
ploy as he would. After all the terrible strain of the fight, 
he found himself suddenly in a place of quiet and leisure. 
The very emptiness of his days might have made them a 
dreadful experience. In the complete reaction of that time 
he might have sunk into depths of misanthropy and gloom. 
Luther was a temperamental man. No doubt he did have 
his times of struggle with invading moods of despondency . 

86 




MAN, BOOK, AND GERMAN LANGUAGE [IX-c] 

But the time at the Wartburg was not a time of wasting and 
decaying misanthropy. It was the time when he got quite 
into the heart of a great achievement. He set about trans- 
lating the Bible into German. He was very eager that his 
translation should be correct. His work had the ideals of 
painstaking scholarship, such as a man of his period could 
know, back of it and expressed in it. But he was not satis- 
fied to be correct. He wanted more than accuracy. He 
wanted life. He wanted his translation to be a living organ- 
ism with luminous eyes, and strong arms, and swift feet, and 
a voice whose penetrating, seizing, holding cadences could 
never be forgotten. He would seek out German people and 
listen to their everyday speech, until at last there leaped 
up fresh from the soil a phrase whose cut and strength made 
it a phrase of power. Not the words and phrases which peo- 
ple used as a substitute for thought satisfied Luther, but 
those words forced forth from the depth of the people's life, 
rich with the quality of their struggles, their hopes and their 
fears, and all the rugged energy of their actual life. 

Luther knew Latin very well indeed when he translated 
the Bible. He had felt the sonorous and stately dignity of 
the Roman speech. He responded to the quality and type 
of Latin idiom and expression. He might have made a Latin 
Bible using German words. He might have expressed the 
Roman spirit using a German vocabulary. The result might 
have been accurate and finely wrought. It might have been 
a genuine achievement in which a scholar made German 
speech the instrument of the genius of that speech with which 
Rome addressed the world which it had conquered. This 
Latin-German Bible would never have gone to the heart of 
the German people. Those who read it would have re- 
spected it, but they never would have loved it. 

Luther knew some Greek w^hen he set about translating 
the Bible. He had a spirit sympathetic and responsive 
enough to sense something of the quality of that highly 

87 



[IX-c] A LIVING BOOK IN A LIVING AGE 

wrought language made for subtle effects and delicate dis- 
tinctions, that language of infinitely fine discriminations 
and infinitely noble artistry. Luther might have attempted 
a Greek Bible using German words. He might have been 
caught by a humanistic passion to make the Bible the Ger- 
mans read a noble monument to the Greek spirit. If he had 
done that, a few enthusiastic men, in whom the fires of the 
Renaissance still burned, would have praised and prized the 
book. But the masses would have ignored it. He would 
have lost his Germans in attempting to make the Germans 
Greeks. 

As a matter of fact Luther did neither of these things. He 
kept close to the German heart. He kept close to the Ger- 
man life. He expressed the very quality of the German 
spirit. He discovered resources in the German tongue un- 
known before. He used it as it had never been used. He 
conserved what was strong in it. He repudiated what was 
weak in it. He gathered together those elements of power 
in his native tongue which were capable of permanent use in 
resilient, forceful, dynamic speech and writing. He was 
one of the founders of German literature. He did more than 
record what he found. He infused into his work a quality 
which affected the nature of the tongue with which he dealt. 
He was one of the founders of the German language. He 
welded people and spirit in a speech whose direct human grip 
and lofty noble power no one can deny. 

And this supreme literary achievement was part of his 
religious achievement. He did it all to get God's message 
to his people. No mere technical scholar could have done 
this work. No mere man of letters with dilettante weighing 
of phrases would have been capable of his achievement. 
Because he was a German of the Germans, because he was a 
Christian tingling with the vitality of his experience, because 
he was one of those men whom words instinctively obey, 
he was able to put the living book into German speech. 

88 



MAN, BOOK, AND GERMAN LANGUAGE [IX-i] 

The spirit of Luther in this work must be the spirit of every 
Christian speaker and writer. It is the perpetual task of 
every Christian leader of every generation to make Chris- 
tianity speak in the very gripping language of the men whom 
he would win. When the Bible does not speak in a man's 
vernacular it loses its power to grip him. Perpetually the 
old message must be told in new words, words hot with the 
fire of men's passion and cold with the ice of their despair, 
words leaping from the caldron of men's strange and wonder- 
ful and mysterious experiences, words first and last and all 
the time which drip with life. 

There is a lesson for America in Luther's achievement. 
He did not try to superimpose upon Germany the forms of 
a foreign culture, however noble. He was contented to let 
the Bible speak German. He listened to the life of his people 
and spoke the language of their own deepest experience. 

The American Christian who is true both to America and 
to Christianity must have a profound belief in American 
life. He must have a profound belief in the American spirit. 
And he must see that up from our deep and wonderful expe- 
riences new and living words are coming all the while. He 
must not let them escape and be forgotten. He must cap- 
ture them and use them for the purposes of the Kingdom of 
God. So the life of our people and the religion of our people 
will develop in noble and productive harmony. So the 
vocabulary of our Christianity shall be kept the vocabulary 
of triumphant life. Men will listen to our words because 
the words themselves are electric with power. 

DAILY READINGS 

Ninth Week, First Day 

Let thy lovingkindnesses also come unto me, O Jehovah, 
Even thy salvation, according to thy word. 
So shall I have an answer for him that reproacheth me; 
For I trust in thy word. 

89 



[IX-2] A LIVING BOOK IN A LIVING AGE . 

And take not the word of truth utterly out of my mouth; 

For I have hoped in thine ordinances. 

So shall I observe thy law continually 

For ever and ever. 

And I shall walk at liberty; 

For I have sought thy precepts. 

I will also speak of thy testimonies before kings, 

And shall not be put to shame. 

And I will delight myself in thy commandments, 

Which I have loved. 

— Psalm 119: 41-47. 

"The Night has a thousand eyes, 
And the Day but one; 
Yet the light of the bright world dies 
With the dying sun. 

The mind has a thousand eyes, 

And the heart but one; 
Yet the light of a whole life dies, 

When love is done." 

So sang a poet who understood that the secret of life comes 
with the awakening of love. This secret was known to the 
author of the words which we have quoted from the 119th 
Psalm. He speaks of law and precept and commandment. 
But he is not a legalist. His heart is full of love. And love 
has transfigured the law. He sees all God's commandments 
through his experience of God's love. It was so with 
Martin Luther after his great adventure of trust. The Bible 
was the book which gleamed and glowed with the message 
which filled his heart with joy and his life with energy. He 
brought more than linguistic knowledge to his work of trans- 
lating. He brought the power of love. 

Ninth Week, Second Day 

Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. 
Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem; and cry unto her, that 
her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned, 

90 



^ 



MAN, BOOK, AND GERMAN LANGUAGE [IX-3] 

that she hath received of Jehovah's hand double for all 
her sins. 

The voice of one that crieth, Prepare ye in the wilder- 
ness the way of Jehovah; make level in the desert a high- 
way for our God. Every valley shall be exalted, and every 
mountain and hill shall be made low; and the uneven 
shall be made level, and the rough places a plain; and the 
glory of Jehovah shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see 
it together; for the mouth of Jehovah hath spoken it. — 
Isa. 40: 1-5. 

The great unknown prophet of the exile was himself 
thrilled through and through by a consciousness of the won- 
derful things which Jehovah was about to do. A new day 
was dawning. God's will was to be realize^. God's glory 
was to be revealed. Sin was to be forgiven and good days 
were to come. The words of the prophet ring with the music 
of his joy and exalting. 

Luther knew the rapture of the same experience. Some- 
thing so wonderful had happened to him that he believed 
that it could transform the world. x\nd the mood of joyous 
expectation was in his heart as he worked at translating the 
Bible into his own tongue. It was to be more than a book. 
It was to be a door through which his people would pass to 
glad, enfranchised life. 

Ninth Week, Third Day 

Behold, the days come, saith Jehovah, that I will make 
a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the 
house of Judah: not according to the covenant that I made 
with their fathers in the day that I took them by the 
hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my 
covenant they brake, although I was a husband unto them, 
saith Jehovah. But this is the covenant that I will make 
with the house of Israel after those days, saith Jehovah: 
I will put my law in their inward parts, and in their heart 
will I write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be 
my people. And they shall teach no more every man 
his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, Know 
Jehovah; for they shall all know me, from the least of 
them unto the greatest of them, saith Jehovah: for I will 

9i 



[IX-4] A LIVING BOOK IN A LIVING AGE 

forgive their iniquity, and their sin will I remember no 
more. — Jer. 31: 31-34. 

Jeremiah was the prophet of the new covenant. It was 
not outward; it was inward. It did not master the hand and 
move in toward the heart; it mastered the heart and moved 
outward to the hand. It was the covenant of an inner trans- 
formation which affects all the life. 

Luther was the modern prophet of the new covenant. 
Religion had become external. In him it renewed its power 
of transforming the heart. And with his experience of the 
new covenant he became a preacher of the new covenant. 
To him the Bible was the book which led people into the new 
covenant of trust and love, and so he was eager to make it 
their personal possession, speaking to them in the familiar 
accents of their own tongue. 

Ninth Week, Fourth Day 

By the rivers of Babylon, 

There we sat down, yea, we wept, 

When we remembered Zion. 

Upon the willows in the midst thereof 

We hanged up our harps. 

For there they that led us captive required of us songs, 

And they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, 

Sing us one of the songs of Zion. 

How shall we sing Jehovah's song 

In a foreign land? 

If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, 

Let my right hand forget her skill. 

Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, 

If I remember thee not; 

If I prefer not Jerusalem 

Above my chief joy. — Psalm 137: 1-6. 

In all literature there are few more fragrant and passionate 
expressions of deep and loyal patriotism than these words 
torn from the heart of a Babylonian exile. The loyalty to 
one's own land and people is one of those forces which have 
cut deeply into the movements of history. When it is hard 

92 



MAN, BOOK, AND GERMAN LANGUAGE [IX-5] 

and cruel and entirely selfish it is sordid and ugly enough. 
When it is nobly unselfish, with a passion to serve the great 
world and to have the nation become the most in order to 
serve the best, it is one of the noblest of the motives which 
sway mankind. 

Luther was genuinely a man of his own people. He loved 
the land, he loved the language, his heart was full of a rich 
and generous loyalty. He was as deeply and thoroughly a 
German as any man who ever walked German soil, and he 
made the songs of Zion sing in German because he was a 

citizen of Zion as well as of his own land. 

- 

Ninth Week, Fifth Day 

And when he had given him leave, Paul, standing on 
the stairs, beckoned with the hand unto the people; and 
when there was made a great silence, he spake unto them 
in the Hebrew language, saying, 

Brethren and fathers, hear ye the defence which I now 
make unto you. 

And when they heard that he spake unto them in the 
Hebrew language, they were the more quiet. — Acts 21: 
40-22: 2. 

Paul's own people were trying with hot hostility to hound 
him to his death. At a time when to most men a speech 
would have seemed clearly impossible Paul secured permis- 
sion to address the wild and howling mob. He had a secret 
of magnetic address and with a telling gesture or two secured 
silence. Then he spoke to the people, falling into their 
own tongue and using the vernacular, full of a thousand 
common associations and memories. By every appeal 
which he could make through common race and language and 
experience, he sought to win a hearing not only for himself 
but for his Lord and Master. 

Ninth Week, Sixth Day 

I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience bear- 
ing witness with me in the Holy Spirit, that I have great 

93 



[IX-7] A LI [/ING BOOK IN A LIVING AGE 

sorrow and unceasing pain in my heart. For I could wish 
that I myself were anathema from Christ for my brethren's 
sake, my kinsmen according to the flesh: who are Israel- 
ites; whose is the adoption, and the glory, and the cove- 
nants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, 
and the promises; whose are the fathers, and of whom 
is Christ as concerning the flesh, who is over all, God 
blessed for ever. Amen. — Rom. 9: 1-5. 

We have already quoted a great Old Testament outburst 
of patriotism, from the book of Psalms. Here is a great New 
Testament outburst of patriotism from the apostle Paul. 
He could not use stronger language. In his love for the peo- 
ple of his own race and his own nation he could fairly be glad 
to become an outcast from God if by that means they could 
be saved. In a few strong broad phrases he runs over some 
of the great things in the religious history of his people. 
What a great past they have had! And how it all lives in 
Paul's heart! He wants the best for his people today. He 
wants them to be indeed the people of God. 

Luther had a temperament not unlike Paul's. Both were 
intense, with great gushes of noble feeling sweeping over them. 
And Luther loved his people as did Paul. He wanted his 
people to have everything God could do for them, and in giv- 
ing them the Bible in German he gave them the very best gift 
within his reach. 

Ninth Week, Seventh Day 

And I heard the number of them that were sealed, a 
hundred and forty and four thousand, sealed out of every 
tribe of the children of Israel. . . . After these things 
I saw, and behold, a great multitude, which no man 
could number, out of every nation and of all tribes and 
peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and be- 
fore the Lamb, arrayed in white robes, and palms in their 
hands; and they cry with a great voice, saying, 

Salvation unto our God who sitteth on the throne, 

and unto the Lamb. — Rev. 7: 4, 9, 10. 

In wonderful flashlight effects the book of Revelation 
gives us many a suggestive picture. Here the seer sees a 

94 



^ 



MAN, BOOK, AND GERMAN LANGUAGE [IX-7] 

great company of the redeemed. He begins with those of 
his own land. Every tribe is represented. A multitude of 
his own nation rejoices in the attainment of the riches God 
has in store. But a picture of this character cannot be merely 
a national picture. The scene extends; the horizon widens; 
people of every nation appear; people of every tongue arise. 
No man could number them; they are beyond computation, 
and they come from all places and all conditions. They are 
joined now in the unity of a common salvation, a common 
participation in the riches of God's great love, and they join 
in a great song to the God who rules, and the Saviour who 
gave his life for them. Here patriotism is included, but it 
is gathered up and transfigured in the glory of the international 
anthem of salvation. 

PERSONAL SUGGESTIONS 

For Luther everything at last found a place as a part of 
his religious life. His patriotism made him want the German 
people to have the very best which religion could do for them. 
Have we seen the religious significance of our patriotism? 
Have we seen the relation of the Bible to the deepest life 
of our people? Have we seen the relation of the Bible to 
citizenship? Are we having a share in that wonderful trans- 
lation of the Bible into the vernacular which is made when 
we so truly live according to the principles of the Bible that 
the men who read our lives are unconsciously reading the 
Scriptures? Have we the Bible's secret so deeply in our 
hearts that it is sure to get upon our tongues? 



OS 



. CHAPTER X 

The Man, the Book, and 
Ideals of Life 

COMMENT FOR THE WEEK 

"That man's religion seems to make him contract. He 
is getting smaller all the time. ,! This was the terse descrip- 
tion of a man who had taken religion as a sort of moral bitters 
rather than as a food. Men do all sorts of curious things 
with religion. They ignore it. They have periodic attacks 
of interest in it. They play with it. They distort it. One 
of the most striking proofs of the genuine structural place of 
religion in the life of a man is that it succeeds in surviving in 
spite of the fashion in which men treat it. 

A man like Phillips Brooks not only made religion com- 
manding. He made it fascinatingly human. He made it 
splendidly vital. And he did this because he gave the new 
life in Christ a normal, sane, and wholesome chance at him. 
He found in religion fulness of life, and so he was able nobly 
to interpret it to the world. 

Martin Luther found in religion a sharp weapon. It gave 
him a sword with which to smite superstition. - It gave him 
a sharp blade to use against evil in Church and State. And 
the cutting power of that weapon was felt in all parts of Eu- 
rope. But religion was vastly more than a weapon to 
Luther. It was a life — rich, full, and abundant. The liv- 
ing book had shared with him a secret of vitalizing power. 
His ideals were enlarged and developed. His ways of think- 
ing about life and feeling about life, and the whole atmos- 

96 






I 




MAN, BOOK, AND IDEALS OF LIFE [X-c] 

phere of his personality, felt the transforming touch of his 
new experience. The rich energies of his life were released. 
All the varied potencies of his personality felt the push which 
moved them toward expression and action. The taste of 
life was given back its freshness. The colors of the world 
were given a new brightness. His youth was renewed and 
a sort of glow and fragrance of spring came to possess his 
spirit. 

Luther the monk built his life about the ideal of repression. 
Luther the evangelical Christian built his life about an eager 
and spontaneous expression of his powers. Luther the monk 
was held to a hard and dreary round of unilluminated activity. 
Luther the evangelical Christian did even dull things with 
a resiliency of spirit, with a sense of their far-reaching sig- 
nificance which touched even the commonplace with a gleam 
of gold. Life had been a prosaic round of duties. It became 
a fascinating adventure, and the duties themselves shone 
with surprising meanings and glowed with creative enthusi- 
asms. When Luther did the old things he did them with a 
new spirit, and he was all the while passing on to new things 
with a freshness of sight, a glowing depth of insight and a 
full vigor of action which gave life a tang and zest unknown 
before. 

This does not mean that Luther had no struggles. It 
does not mean that he was without dull and heavy days. 
But it does mean that a new glad spirit was at work in his 
life. He was not always flying, but he had been given wings, 
and his spirit had many a wonderful experience of high and 
long and sustained flight. He knew the meaning of physical 
reactions. He felt the quality of heavy and weighted dul- 
ness which comes to a man after he has given himself forth 
with too great abandon. But the real current of his life 
flowed along deep and steady and strong and full. His 
powers were brought to rich and varied expression. There 
was a rhythm of vital activity about his days. 

97 



[X-c] A LIVING BOOK IN A LIVING AGE 

Very definitely Luther came to see that the man who trusts 
in the Son of God and finds the gates of life swinging open 
before him, is the heir of the best life has to give. The ideal 
Christian is not a man who does without a home. He is a 
man who has a great home. The echo of children's voices, 
all the melody of a loving and happy home life, belong to 
the very nature of the Christian ideal. A monastery is a 
place of fragmentary living, and fragmentary living is never 
completely Christian. 

Long after Martin Luther's time Ralph Waldo Emerson 
wrote: 

"I am owner of the sphere, 
Of the seven stars and the solar year, 
Of Caesar's hand, and Plato's brain, 
Of Lord Christ's heart, and Shakespeare's strain." 

The sense of possession, the proud consciousness of owner- 
ship was in Luther as well as in Emerson. To Lather it was 
the ownership of a man to whom the living Christ had given 
the keys of all wholesome experiences. Life was a gift of 
God. It was not at bottom a temptation of the devil. 

So a new wave of gladness swept abroad in the wake of 
Luther's teaching. Pale and emaciated asceticism lost its 
charm and began to appear as merely bony and ugly. You 
could look at a flower without scenting moral poison in its 
fragrance. You could laugh in rich human heartiness with- 
out feeling the icy hand of a ghostly conscience reached forth 
to stifle your mirth. 

All this does not mean that Luther underestimated life's 
moral problem. It does not mean that he failed to sense 
its ethical tragedy. Life was always a fight to him, and the 
foes were very real. But he believed that you could fight 
better with a song in your heart. He believed that you could 
fight better with a light in your eye. He believed that you 
should avoid poison. But he believed that your whole 

98 



MAN, BOOK, AND IDEALS OF LIFE [X-c] 

organism — physical, mental, moral, and spiritual — should 
be kept in robust and vigorous health. 

Luther felt himself free in the Kingdom of God and that 
freedom was not merely a freedom from dark and terrible 
pangs of conscience and devastating evils, it was a freedom 
to enjoy all good and noble and wholesomely human things, 
To him religion was not sour. It was sweet with an enticing 
fragrance. It was beautiful like a blooming flower. 

This inner attitude never descended for Luther into a sort 
of cloying sweetness, as has been the case with some advo- 
cates of a rapturous religion. There was always a stern 
strength in his ideal of the Christian life. If, like Paul, he 
rejoiced in his freedom, like Paul he rejoiced, too, in being 
able to wear the whole armor of God. His piety was full of 
joy. But it was the joy of a soldier, the gladness of a brave 
fighting man who never turned his back upon the foe. His 
sunny spirit bent under heavier burdens than weighed upon 
any other man of the sixteenth century. He passed through 
conflict after conflict. He was never free from some plotting 
hostility. He could always find a cloud somewhere in the 
horizon. Sometimes the whole sky was overcast. But the 
sun was shining in Luther's heart. And that inner gladness 
made him strong to bear what would have crushed com- 
pletely another man. 

This was not fundamentally a matter of temperament. 
It was a matter of experiencing to the full the meaning of 
that experience of trust in Christ of which the New Testament 
so eloquently speaks. Luther was free from the burden 
which the hands of Christ had lifted. He did not have to 
solve the problem which had been met and "mastered in the 
heart of Christ, when there rose a spiritual Calvary before 
he was lifted in the cruel pain of love upon the cross. He did 
not try to do again what the Son of God had done for him. 
And in his living trust in the Christ of the living book, he 
found an energy entering his soul, luminous with light, surg- 

99 



[X-i] A LIVING BOOK IN A LIVING AGE 

ing with vitality, rich in power. The secret of Luther is the 
secret of the Book of Life. 

When you follow this sturdy German through the winding 
ways of his career, you see many an ideal emerge. Sometimes 
he is being loyal to some tradition stately and old ; some- 
times he is making his way into paths untried and new; and 
back of his conservatism and back of his radical activities 
there is his one creative experience of the joyous energizing 
love of God. He meets life with a mastering consciousness 
of the nearness of the living Christ. He does not meet it 
with a hard and rigid set of rules. That living spirit of the 
Master makes him able to meet the hour of sacrifice with 
unhesitating strength. It enables him to enjoy God's gifts 
with unalloyed pleasure; it refines his gladness; it ennobles 
his pain. And so his own commanding Christian vitality 
becomes one of his best gifts to the world. 

DAILY READINGS 

Tenth Week, First Day 

When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called 
my son out of Egypt. The more the prophets called them, 
the more they went from them: they sacrificed unto the 
Baalim, and burned incense to graven images. Yet I 
taught Ephraim to walk; I took them on my arms; but 
they knew not that I healed them. I drew them with 
cords of a man, with bands of love; and I was to them 
as they that lift up the yoke on their jaws; and I laid 
food before them. — Hos. n: 1-4. 

It is a wonderfully human God whom Hosea portrays in these 
words. He comes close to men, with a loving tenderness 
which makes him infinitely winsome. You see him caring 
for Israel as a mother cares for her children. 

When Luther advanced beyond that legal religion which 
had chained him, to the peace of a great trust, he discovered 
the human God. And he saw life and its relations in a new 
and more genial perspective. He had worshipped a grim 

100 



MAN, BOOK, AND IDEALS OF LIFE [X-2] 

and austere celestial tyrant. Now he looked up to a God 
of amazingly tender friendliness who took the burden of 
humanity upon his own heart. Luther's legal deity had never 
possessed such power of working moral transformations as 
the God to whom he gave his heart in an abandon of devo- 
tion. Now he knew what it was to experience the love of 
God and it made a new man of him. 

Tenth Week, Second Day 

Jehovah is my shepherd; I shall not want. 
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; 
He leadeth me beside still waters. 
He restoreth my soul: 

He guideth me in the paths of righteousness for his 
name's sake. 

— Psalm 23: 1-3. 

Some things we know so well that we do not know them 
at all. We are so familiar with them that we have forgotten 
what they are like. Gilbert Chesterton once observed in 
his clever way that if you look at a thing nine hundred and 
ninety-nine times you are perfectly safe. But if you look 
at it the thousandth time there is danger that you may see 
it. We need to take the thousandth look at the twenty- 
third Psalm. Then we will discover that the God it tells 
about is not the deity of a stately solemn ritual. He is not 
the God of austere mental manipulations which show the 
deity in an icy cloud of formulas about his attributes. He is 
the God of the tender touch. You do not know many things 
about the shepherd God of the twenty-third Psalm, as the 
poem sings about him. But you do know that he will take 
care of you; you do know that he loves to make you glad. 

Luther learned to know the God of the twenty-third Psalm. 
He knew a great deal about God which that Psalm does not 
tell. But he never forgot that tender compassion which 
makes God a friend, to whom we can go for shelter in the midst 
of life. If you have a shepherd God, you have to be a shep- 

101 



[X-3] A LIVING BOOK IN A LIVING AGE 

herd, too, and so what God is determines what your life 
shall be. 

Tenth Week, Third Day 

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after 
our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish 
of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over 
the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping 
thing that creepeth upon the earth. And God created 
man in his own image, in the image of God created he 
him; male and female created he them. And God blessed 
them: and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, 
and replenish the earth, and subdue it. — Gen. i: 26-28. 

This is a memorable picture of the friendly God creating 
and blessing man. You see the deepest order of nature as 
the order of God's will, and you fairly sense the smile of God 
as he looks upon his creatures. 

Luther never underestimated the tragedy of sin. He 
knew what a black and blighting thing it is. But he knew 
that there is a greater power in the world than sin. He knew 
that the redeeming love of God had made a way for man back 
to the smile of the Creator and he knew that man's best work 
is done in the consciousness of the divine favor. Not as a 
cowering slave in an unfriendly universe, but as a son and 
heir in his father's house, does man come to his real stature 
and reach his true qualities of life. 

Tenth Week, Fourth Day 

And there were shepherds in the same country abiding 
in the field, and keeping watch by night over their flock. 
And an angel of the Lord stood by them, and the glory 
of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore 
afraid. And the angel said unto them, Be not afraid; 
for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which 
shall be to all the people: for there is born to you this 
day in the city of David a Saviour, who is Christ the 
Lord. — Luke 2: 8-1 1. 

If a dark and lowering cloud of gloom is heavy upon you, 
you cannot understand the Christmas joy. If a hard and 

102 



MAN, BOOK, AND IDEALS OF LIFE [X-5] 

rigid sense of guilt lays its chains upon your spirit, you cannot 
sing the Christmas songs. And your dull misanthropy 
goes out all over your life. There is blackness and gloom 
everywhere. Life cannot be radiant for you if you have 
an alien soul. Luther knew the tragedy of all this. And he 
knew the glory of coming out of it. The Saviour became 
in a definitely personal sense his Saviour. Then loads van- 
ished. His head was lifted. The Christmas joy was put 
in his heart to remain through all seasons. 

And his whole view of life caught the quality of triumph. 
His ideals shone with the gold of his own experiences. The 
religion of the angel's friendly announcement became his 
own, and through him it became the possession of a multi- 
tude. Old words shone with a great luster, because at last 
he knew their meaning. 

Tenth Week, Fifth Day 

A certain man was going down from Jerusalem to 
Jericho; and he fell among robbers, who both stripped 
him and beat him, and departed, leaving him half dead. 
... A certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where 
he was: and when he saw him, he was moved with com- 
passion, and came to him, and bound up his wounds, pour- 
ing on them oil and wine; and he set him on his own 
beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. 
—Luke 10: 30, 33, 34. 

The journey from sacerdotal into vital religion involved 
many things. One was a new sense of all the human values. 
The priest in the parable of the good Samaritan passed by 
as far away as possible. He had ecclesiastical authority. 
He had command of a great ritual. But he did not have 
a human heart. The new life which came to Luther made 
him every day more like the good Samaritan and less like 
the priest. The fountains of compassion in his life were 
set flowing. A fresh contact with reality meant a freshening 
and a humanizing of his ideals of life all the way through. 

103 



[X-6] A LIVING BOOK IN A LIVING AGE 

Tenth Week, Sixth Day 

And they were bringing unto him also their babes, 
that he should touch them: but when the disciples saw 
it, they rebuked .them. But Jesus called them unto him, 
saying, Suffer the little children to come unto me, and 
forbid them not: for to such belongeth the kingdom of 
God. Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive 
the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall in no wise 
enter therein. — Luke 18: 15-17. 

In a unique sense Christianity is the religion of happy 
childhood. It considers childhood and makes a place for 
it. Christianity, like its founder, always has open arms for 
the little children. 

Luther's attitude toward childhood, his tender and whim- 
sical understanding of his own children, his gay and bright 
conceits as he wrote them letters, and all his fashion of sum- 
moning the child in himself back, that he might be a child 
with them, constitute one of the happiest and most attractive 
aspects of his life. The contrast between the lonely monk 
plodding his slavish legal way and the hearty, eager father 
telling a child's story to make heaven real, is one of the most 
revealing contrasts in Luther's career. And we must not 
forget that it was the new life which enabled him to be a happy 
father. 

Tenth Week, Seventh Day 

What man of you, having a hundred sheep, and having 
lost one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in 
the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he 
find it? And when he hath found it, he layeth it on his 
shoulders, rejoicing. And when he cometh' home, he 
calleth together his friends and his neighbors, saying unto 
them, Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which 
was lost. I say unto you, that even so there shall be joy 
in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over 
ninety and nine righteous persons, who need no repent- 
ance. — Luke 15: 4-7. 

If you have a God who angrily turns away when in the 
far mountains he hears the cry of the lost, this is a dark and 

104 



MAN, BOOK, AND IDEALS OF LIFE [X-7] 

hopeless world. If you have a God who at cost of pain and 
suffering seeks the lost, a new sure hope rises above the 
horizon to shine forever. The possession of a friendly, seek- 
ing God is the greatest asset of religion. And this was the 
God whom Luther found. After that great discovery, 
religion was no more a ritual. It was no more an active 
attempt to work passage to the great haven. It was a per- 
sonal relation of trust in a personally loving God, who was 
seen perpetually through the loving, suffering face of Christ. 
And life was the application of the spirit of this new relation 
to every aspect of human experience. To suffuse life with 
the meaning of the new life, that was the only satisfying 
ideal. 

PERSONAL SUGGESTIONS 

Luther entered into the human aspects* of religion. It 
had a new bright winsomeness as he interpreted it to the 
world. Is our religion attractive? Do we illustrate the com- 
pelling, winning qualities of our faith? Has our ideal of the 
Christian life caught the glow of such a relationship of loving 
trust in God, that we see all men with a new loving heartiness? 
Have little children the place in our thought which they 
possessed in the thought of the Master? Do men feel nearer 
to a God of human friendliness because of the fashion in 
which our lives interpret God to them? 



105 



CHAPTER XI 

The Living Age 

COMMENT FOR THE WEEK 

In a wonderful stanza of "The Scholar Gypsy" Matthew 
Arnold wrote: 

"Oh, born in days when wits were fresh and clear, 
And life ran gayly as the sparkling Thames; 
Before the strange disease of modern life, 
With its sick hurry, its divided aims, 

Its heads o'er taxed, its palsied hearts, was rife, — 
Fly hence, our contact fear! 
Still fly, plunge deeper in the bowering wood! 
Averse, as Dido did with gesture stern 
From her false friend's approach in Hades turn, 
Wave us away, and keep thy solitude!" 

One need not share Matthew Arnold's pessimism about 
the nineteenth century in order to believe that there are differ- 
ences in ages. Some ages are dull and drowsy, without ini- 
tiative and quite without creative energy. Some are red 
with a heart-broken tragedy which the world can never 
forget. Some are gladly and magnetically and vividly alive. 
The sixteenth century ranks among the most vital ages of 
all the world. 

The century came in the wake of the voyages of Columbus, 
and the new geography with its enlarging horizons was typical 
of the quality of the age's life. The body of man moved 
over long ocean trails and made its pathways in new lands. 

1 06 



THE LIVING AGE [XI-c] 

The mind of man pressed out on its own adventure, back 
to rediscover the past, and on to make an intellectual future 
large and full for mankind. The soul of man moved out on 
lofty wing, and nobly flying sang from the spiritual heights. 
The age was full of interest and full of vital events. 

No serious historian could credit to Martin Luther a 
monopoly in dealing with life-giving influences in the six- 
teenth century. And no historian with an adequate appraisal 
of the deepest things in the life of the age would deny to 
Luther a place of commanding significance. When Glad- 
stone died Sir William Robertson Nicoll wrote in the British 
Weekly that the great statesman had so lived and worked 
as to help to keep the soul alive in England. Luther did 
that for Germany. In some genuine measure he did it for 
Europe. 

The great discoveries might easily have become a tragic 
source of decadence. Spain, drunk with her magnificent im- 
ported treasures, did strut with vast pretense upon the stage 
of Europe for awhile, only to stagger away to be a second-rate 
power in all the days which followed. Material possessions 
do not necessarily mean enlargement of life. Wealth unas- 
similated bv the conscience, treasures unmastered by moral 
power, leave men and nations like a richly decorated vessel 
with no contents. Or, even worse, the vessel contains that 
which has become a mass of decay . 

Rudolph Eucken once wrote, in wiser and more far-sighted 
days, of the inner bankruptcy of a great material civiliza- 
tion. In truth every added material resource of the world 
must be mastered and controlled by moral and spiritual forces 
in order to secure the safety of the world. If mankind is to 
be more than a well-fed beast, the soul must be kept upon 
the throne. 

Here Luther was of the most tremendous service. While 
ships were sailing uncharted seas, while the world was mov- 
ing out into a new commerce, while nations like England 

107 



[XI-c] A LIVING BOOK IN A LIVING AGE 

were rising to a new and far-flung strength, Luther was keep- 
ing the soul upon the throne. The new life of which he was 
a prophet was such a powerful thing that it held its own 
while mankind was rubbing its eyes as the world expanded 
in its very presence to a size undreamed of before. It was a 
remarkable service of Luther that, in an age when the world 
was growing by leaps and bounds, he kept the soul in advance 
of the growing world. In this way Luther's discovery of 
God is more significant than Columbus's discovery of America. 
In fact the only safe way to discover a new continent is to 
rediscover God at the same time. Luther was of the same 
powerful build of personality as Magellan and the great sea- 
farers of the age. He, too, sailed unknown seas and he, too, 
made strange ports. And his spiritual explorations are the 
supreme legacy from the sixteenth century. 

The vital quality of the period of Luther is also seen in the 
realm of the intellect. The fires of the Renaissance were still 
burning. That prince of humanists, Erasmus, was still alive. 
The apostles of the brilliant and resourceful mind themselves 
believed that they had a gospel for the world. Here, too, 
there was need of supplement. The glorious freedom of the 
uncharted mind does not serve the prolonged well-being 
of the world. The Renaissance in Italy, which had been 
curiously without ethical passion, had illustrated the fashion 
in which good taste can be united with bad morals and a 
mental awakening may leave the conscience heavily slum- 
bering. The fact is that a brilliant mind is more a liability 
than an asset, unless that mind is mastered and controlled 
by moral and spiritual purpose. Mephistopheles may be 
more attractive than Satan, but after all society is not 
advanced by making the devil attractive. And a man with 
a mind alive and alert as the mind of a young god and a will 
poisoned by all sorts of selfishness and evil is more dangerous 
than a dull and sodden sort of a man whose brutality is unre- 
lieved by fascinating mental brilliancy. Some force was 

108 



THE LIVING AGE [XI-c] 

needed in the sixteenth century to lift the very mental life 
of the age to its highest moral and spiritual potency. Even 
humanists like Erasmus who had a profoundly serious purpose 
could not do the great thing which needed to be done. They 
lacked in depth and richness of inner life. Erasmus thought 
he would laugh the evils of the age out of court. He did 
yeoman's service, but the situation needed something more 
than the graceful thrust of a satirist's pen. Humanism was 
as beautiful as shimmering moonlight. But only burning 
sunlight can dry up miasmic swamps. And what humanism 
could not do Luther did. He came with the awful rush and 
roar of an avalanche and many refined spirits were so bewil- 
dered by the noise and confusion that they could not see 
the service. But only a moral and spiritual avalanche could 
do the destructive work which needed to be done before the 
great constructive work could be achieved. The confused 
and nervous helplessness of Melancthon after Luther's death 
illustrates the futility of humanism to deal alone with the 
great crisis. For it was where he was a humanist that 
Melancthon was weakest and where he was a part of Luther's 
titanic movement that he was most strong. 

Luther changed an age of intellectual keenness and awak- 
ening taste into an age of moral and spiritual power. The 
mind came to fuller vigor and deeper insight under the influ- 
ence of that new experience of contact with the living God of 
which Luther was the prophet. Humanism meant new ideas; 
the Reformation meant new life. 

The misunderstanding between Luther and Erasmus >»was 
natural enough. Erasmus was an apostle of clearness and 
light (not exactly "sweetness and light," for his words were 
often swords and his light could burn), who had never felt 
his soul torn by despair or lifted to heights of victory by the 
present power of God. Luther had a mind— and a wonder- 
ful mind it was. But, first and most important of all, Luther 
had an experience. The new life in Christ dominated him. 

109 



[XI-iJ A LIVING BOOK IN A LIVING AGE 

■ 
- 

His mind was the servant and the instrument of this over- 
whelming vitality. It was inevitable that Erasmus would 
seem pale and anemic and calculating to Luther. It was 
inevitable that Luther would seem hectic and overwrought 
and brutal to Erasmus. Each man served his generation. 
But without the titanic impact of Luther and his dynamic 
religious experience, there would have been no such new day 
of moral and spiritual power as came to the world. 

We may say, then, that if the sixteenth century was a 
living age, its profoundest direction and its noblest inspiration 
came from the movement which we associate with the name 
of Martin Luther. And we must remember that the leader 
was not the only man who had an evangelical Christian 
experience. What had happened to Luther happened in 
multitudes. The fire blazed from heart to heart. Men 
everywhere found firsthand a trusting and renewing contact 
with the living God. He came to dwell in their hearts. The 
divine presence in human life was the secret of the greatest 
things in this living age. 

DAILY. READINGS 

Eleventh Week, First Day 

Now Jehovah said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy 
country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's 
house, unto the land that I will show thee: and I will 
make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and 
make thy name great; and be thou a blessing: and I will 
bless them that bless thee, and him that curseth thee will 
I curse: and in thee shall all the families of the earth be 
blessed. — Gen. 12: 1-3. 

Dr. George Matheson once penned a luminous study of 
Abraham. He made you feel the pulse of new desire and 
generous purpose which sent the patriarch away on his long 
wanderings. You came close to the living energy which 
pushed the young man of long ago out into a far world into 
which he might build his life in effective serving power. 

no 






THE LIVING AGE [XI-2] 

There is always a vital man back of a vital movement and 
there are always vital men back of a living age. The new 
pulse-beat of aspiration in the individual man, the urge of 
a purpose and a motive unknown before, the summons of 
beckoning ideals, bring the age of energy and achievement 
into being. Multitudes of young man have had the heart 
of the experience which the book of Genesis ascribes to the 
far-off patriarch. They have felt drawn to new fields where 
thev were to achieve for God and men. And as thev obeved 
the inner summons they were the heralds of new life for the 
world. 

Eleventh Week, Second Day 

So king Solomon exceeded all the kings of the earth 
in riches and in wisdom. And all the earth sought the 
presence of Solomon, to hear his wisdom, which God had 
put in his heart. And they brought every man his tribute, 
vessels of silver, and vessels of geld, and raiment, and 
armor, and spices, horses, and mules, a rate year by year. 
— I Kings 10: 23-25. 

Alfred Noyes, in one of his wonderfully melodious poems, 
"Crimson Sails," sings: 

"But Salomon sacked the sunset 

Wherever his black ships rolled, 
He rolled it up like a crimson cloth, 

And crammed it into his hold. . . . 
His masts were Lebanon cedars, 

His sheets were singing blue, 
But that was never the reason why, 
He stuffed his hold with the sunset sky! 
The kings could cut their cedars,- 

And sail from Ophir, too; 
But Salomon packed his heart with dreams, 

And all the dreams were true." 

The brilliant court and the mental power of Solomon fasci- 
nated all the East. His reign became one of the vivid, memor- 

iii 



[XI-3] A LIVING BOOK IN A LIVING AGE 

able traditions of the world. You have a sense of amazing 
energy, of wonderful buildings wrought by men's hands, 
of wonderful achievements of the mind, as you read about 
Solomon's reign. His age was alive with intense, active 
vigor. But the secret of permanency was not in the vitality 
of that age. It contained seeds of decay and death. Op- 
pression and the heavy hand of power crushing the strength 
out of the weak, lay invisible behind the splendor. So Solo- 
mon's reign was a sunset and not a sunrise. 

The glory of Spain in the sixteenth century, like the glory 
of Solomon, was not a glory which promised good things for 
the future. Spam's energy was not the power of a great 
beginning. It was the flash of glory marking a climax of 
power. 

Eleventh Week, Third Day 

O give thanks unto Jehovah; for he is good; 

For his lovingkindness endureth for ever. 

Let the redeemed of Jehovah say so, 

Whom he hath redeemed from the hand of the adversary, 

And gathered out of the lands, 

From the east and from the west, 

From the north and from the south. — Psalm 107: 1-3. 

A certain singing joyousness is one of the characteristics 
of an age of complete vitality. And vital movements have 
a way of breaking into song. Luther's great hymn 'A 
mighty fortress is our God' represents an essential aspect 
of the strength of the whole movement. Something so won- 
derful had happened that men could not be content with 
talking about it. They had to sing about it. And that 
mood of rapturous singing sent them forth to win more vic- 
tories. 

So it was in the eighteenth century, when Charles Wesley 
sang the most vital movement of the age into hearts it would 
have reached in no other way. The lyric praise of the 107th 
Psalm has the secret of propulsion and power in it. 

112 




THE LIVING AGE [XI-4] 

Eleventh Week, Fourth Day 

My soul doth magnify the Lord, 

And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour. 

For he hath looked upon the low estate of his handmaid: 

For behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me 

blessed. 

For he that is mighty hath done to me great things; 

And holy is his name. 

And his mercy is unto generations and generations 

On them that fear him. T „, T . - ^ 

— JLuke 1 : 40-50. 

The song of joy sung by Mary rings with the rapture of the 
better days to come. The past may be dark — the future is 
full of light. Old days may be full of evil — new days are to 
be full of good. And she is to have a wonderful share in 
the great things which God will do for the world. 

Thomas Carlyle cried out in a darkly pessimistic mood, 
'God does nothing. He does nothing." While a man is in 
that mood he can be a great destructive critic, but he cannot 
be a great constructive force. But when he believes with 
Mary that God is just about to do the most amazing and 
wonderful things, his very attitude puts promise of power 
into his own life. 

The Reformation filled the world with new expectations. 
It taught men to look forward. It helped them to believe 
in the days to come. It built joyous expectation into the 
very lives of men. 

Eleventh Week, Fifth Day 

And Levi made him a great feast in his house: and 
there was a great multitude of publicans and of others 
that were sitting at meat with them. And the Pharisees 
and their scribes murmured against his disciples, saying, 
Why do ye eat and drink with the publicans and sinners? 
And Jesus answering said unto them, They that are in 
health have no need of a physician; but they that are sick. 
I am not come to call the righteous but sinners to re- 
pentance. — Luke 5: 29-32. 

A movement of the largest and most potent effect must be 

113 



[XI-6] A LIVING BOOK IN A LIVING AGE 

able to make weak men strong and to make bad men good. 
As we watch Jesus moving about in the world we see him 
doing this very thing. And the ages when Christianity has 
functioned according to its true nature have been ages when 
moral and spiritual transformations were wrought on every 
hand. The one who could make men over again brought 
to the world the promise of vitality almost beyond belief. 

You see the gripping, transforming energy of Christianity 
at work in the sixteenth century. Luther is the prophet of 
a dynamic religion. It has changed him. It changes other 
men. It goes to a feast with the wicked and leaves the good. 
It solves the problems of sinners by making them righteous. 
And thus it makes a great contribution to the actual life of 
the age. 

Eleventh Week, Sixth Day 

And the angel answered and said unto the women, Fear 
not ye; for I know that ye seek Jesus, who hath been 
crucified. He is not here; for he is risen, even as he said. 

. . And they departed quickly from the tomb with 
fear and great joy, and ran to bring his disciples word. 
And behold, Jesus met them, saying, All hail. — Matt. 28: 
5, 6, 8, 9. 

"I cannot believe in life, I can only believe in death.' : So 
cried a mother in anguish as she mourned the loss of an only 
son. Her pastor read over to her some of the great passages 
in the gospels telling of the Resurrection. Then he said: 
"After that I cannot believe in death, I can only believe 
in life." 

The new life in Christ has a basis of facts. It wings to 
far heights, but it takes its flight from the solid ground. 
The Reformation was not an experience which was a substi- 
tute for facts. It was an experience based upon facts and 
producing other facts. The living Christ produced life in 
the world. And the hearty faith in the Resurrection released 
energies which could have been set free in no other way. 

: 114 



THE LIVING AGE [XI-7] 

Only a God who can speak through facts can vitalize the 
world. The Christ who is stronger than death can awaken 
new life in men. In the long run the religion of the uncon- 
quered tomb becomes the religion of the uninspired life. 
Matthew Arnold could keep his noble purpose while he sang 
of the lone Syrian grave where the body of Christ still lay. 
But the very firmness of his own ethical fiber was the gift 
to him of those who believed what he found it impossible to 
accept. The race's vital interests are perpetually bound 
up with the empty tomb. 

Eleventh Week, Seventh Day 

Let not your heart be troubled: believe in God, believe 
also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions; 
if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to 
prepare a place for you. — John 14: 1, 2. 

Elizabeth Stuart Phelps in her "Chapters from a Life' 
tells how, when the Civil War had harvested death in all 
the fields of the nation, she longed to say an interpreting 
word to those who had seen fair youth snuffed out and who 
sat in a terrible silence. She wrote "The Gates Ajar' to 
make the life to come more real and human to sad hearts. 

The same problem is being lifted anew by the terrible sacri- 
fices of the present war. The word immortality is a word 
men and women must pronounce if they are to be saved 
from despair. And Jesus Christ alone pronounces that word 
with complete authenticity. 

Christians of the sixteenth century faced every evil with 
eyes which were glad because they saw towers of safety 
beyond the valley of death. Their activity had a high and 
commanding vitality because they believed in immortality. 

PERSONAL SUGGESTIONS 

'I thought I was alive, but I am only making motions." 
So said an eager girl at a student conference, where a power- 

115 



[XI-7] A LIVING BOOK IN A LIVING AGE 

ful address had just been given on "Life Triumphant.' 5 The 
study of life in any age brings home to us the question of 
the life in our own hearts. Are we alive? Do we want to 
be alive? Are we willing to face the responsibilities of 
actually living? 



no 







CHAPTER XII 

The Living Book and Our Age 

COMMENT FOR THE WEEK 

"Beat down that beetling mountain, 

And raise yon jutting cape. 
A world is on the anvil: 

Now smite it into shape. 
Whence comes that iron music 

Whose sound is heard afar? 
The hammers of the world smiths 

Are beating out a star." 

These words have the bite and power of an energetic age 
in them. They express the very quality of our time. Tre- 
mendous things are happening all the while. It is an age 
of destroying. It is an age of building. Sometimes it is 
hard to tell whether the destructive or the constructive 
forces are the more powerful. Nature is being enlarged. 
Men are being organized for stupendous tasks. And in 
the midst of all this heaving motion of a vastly enlarging 
material civilization, the trumpets blow and all men's mighty 
resources are brought to bear upon the business of war. 
Conflicting ideals of life are fighting to the death and are 
using every material resource to aid them. Far-flung battle 
lines, amazing heroism, awful atrocities, and the long roar 
of the terrible guns fill the mind of the world. 

Does the living book have a message to this strange, 
brilliant, terrible age? Are the voices which speak from that 
book mighty enough to be heard above the noise of the buzz- 

117 



[XII-c] A LIVING BOOK IN A LIVING AGE 

ing wheels of our industry and the bursting shells of battle? 
Does that book which was the most vital influence in the 
sixteenth century have the secret which is needed by ours? 

When we try to appraise the relation of the Bible to men 
who are now living and thinking and working and fighting, 
we at once confront the intellectual revolution and the 
changes it has wrought in respect of Bible study as of many 
other things. Under the microscope of scientific scholar- 
ship the documents which make up the Old Testament and 
the New have been subjected to such scrutiny in the last 
fifty years as they never met in previous days. As a result 
we know more about the Bible than we ever knew before. 
We have had to change our views about some things. In 
matters of date and authorship there have been revolutionary 
changes in men's views regarding much of the material 
which we find in the biblical books. How does this affect 
the power of the Bible to speak the great word to men? How 
does it affect the moral and spiritual authority of the Bible? 

The reply is that if we have come to have a vital concep- 
tion of the Bible, its power remains, in spite of all the changes 
brought about by a brilliant critical scholarship whose legiti- 
mate limits we recognize. In fact, the Bible has become 
vastly more human and in many a spot vastly more gripping, 
since we see in a new way the fashion in which particular 
passages came leaping right out of the life and experience 
of their time. 

Sir William Robertson Nicoll wrote a fine book called 
"The Church's One Foundation," in which he declared in 
his memorable . and powerful way that the central strength 
of the Bible, its power to grip the conscience and life of men 
as it speaks through the person and work of Christ, remains 
firm and true. The fundamental principles involved were 
put as clearly as anywhere, in a little book by Dr. Robert 
William Dale, entitled "The Living Christ and the Four 
Gospels." Dr. Dale developed three positions. First: the 

118 



THE LIVING BOOK AND OUR AGE [XII-c] 

portrait of Christ in the gospels has an inherent power to 
grip and master men. However that portrait was made, 
whoever and whatever the men and methods employed, in 
the presence of that portrait, the response of our own mind 
and heart tells us that we have come upon the supreme moral 
and spiritual asset of the race. Coleridge put the same prin- 
ciple in the phrase, "The Bible finds me." 

Second: Dr. Dale declares that the man who takes the 
gospels seriously and surrenders his life in trusting obedience 
to the One who walks in triumph through their pages, comes 
to have a telling and out-reaching experience. As he accepts 
Jesus Christ, the great Master comes into his own life. He 
walks right out of the gospels into the heart of the man who 
accepts him. He ceases to be merely the Christ of history; 
he becomes also the Christ of experience. Now the man has 
an inner source of certainty which criticism cannot touch. Like 
the blind man whom Jesus healed he can say, "Whereas I 
was blind, now I see." He has immediate contact in expe- 
rience with the ultimate certainty of the world. 

Third: This individual experience of life made over by 
the inner action of the living Christ has been happening to 
men for ages. Every individual experience is confirmed by 
the multitudes of men who, in all these succeeding genera- 
tions, have had the same contact with the reality of Christ's 
work in the soul, and the same securing of certainty through 
a life renewed by his power. The social reenforcement of 
individual experience builds it into immovable strength. 

Harold Begbie's books, "Twice Born Men," "Souls in 
Action," and "The Ordinary Man and the Extraordinary 
Thing," put what is essentially the same argument in the 
form of a succession of gripping tales of men and women 
whose lives have been transformed by the power of Christ. 

It all comes at last to this: Human life is a lock, Jesus 
Christ is the key. The key fits the lock and opens the door 
to new life. This is the final and unanswerable argument for 

119 t 



[XII-c] A LIVING BOOK IN A LIVING AGE 

the validity of the message which issues from the living 
book. 

It is unaffected by waves of critical investigation. It 
is the solid basis for certainty amidst changing views. 

Now what can be said of the relation of this living book 
to a busy industrial age? When belts and wheels and 
machinery of amazing intricacy and efficient organization 
of physical and personal forces are the outstanding mat- 
ters, can that ancient vital book which cries from deep in 
the conscience and the heart of humanity get a hearing? 

Years ago in one of his few pessimistic moods, Ralph 
Waldo Emerson, sensing the onrushing forces of a great 
material age, cried out, 'Things are in the saddle and ride 
mankind.' 5 And often it does seem as if the machines are 
making men in their own image, rather than the men using 
the machines for personal ends. Dr. Jowett, of the Fifth 
Avenue Presbyterian Church, in an after-dinner speech 
once characterized New York City in his deft and effective 
way by quoting a passage of Scripture. These were the 
words of the quotation: "The spirit of the living creature 
is in the wheels." He had seen how omnipresent the wheels 
are in the life of the big town. He felt the tragedy of a 
world where things are attempting to rule the spirit. 

Is the voice of the Bible quite drowned out in an age 
like this? Are the big strident voices so powerful that 
they leave no place for the still small voice? 

The first answer is a matter of great importance. Human 
nature is structurally so constituted that a man cannot 
be a mere machine and be contented. He cannot be a mere 
luxurious, brainy animal and be contented. He cannot 
rest in the bed of luxury he makes for himself. A voice 
cries out in his soul which only a voice from the vaulted 
heaven can answer. The nature of man cries for some- 
thing which our virile efficient age cannot give. And that 
something lies waiting in the message of the Bible. 
# 120 






THE LIVING BOOK AND OUR AGE [XII-c] 

The second answer is that the type of life built about material 
efficiency and power alone has seeds of decay in it. You can- 
not organize the human stuff about inhuman ideals. And 
mere machine ideals are inhuman. So unless higher forces 
come in, the disintegrating elements tear the life apart. 
To be efficient you must be more than efficient. And this 
organizing motive which can enable man to use a machine 
without becoming a machine is found in that life of religion 
of which the Bible is the instrument. Because it has the vital 
secret our age must have, the Bible is still the living book. 

But what about the war? All the influence of the living 
book has not prevented a vast and terrible reign of death 
in the world. Is not the Bible discredited by the sight of 
Christian nations leaping at each other's throats? Here 
the truth must be spoken quite simply and candidly. No one 
can claim for a moment that the obeying of the Bible 
caused this war. No one can claim for a moment that the 
enthronement of the spirit of the Bible in men's hearts 
caused the holocaust. On the contrary, this war would have 
been impossible had the deepest message of the Bible been 
the dominant force in the life of that nation which broke 
the peace with an astounded and unprepared world. The 
whole dream of Titanic world-mastery was based upon a 
repudiation of every essential feature of the message of the 
New Testament. And that dream caused war. 

Then this thing must be said: The force to resist malig- 
nant evil, the force to fight for the freedom of the world, 
the force to pay the last price of sacrifice to save men from 
brutal autocracy, the spiritual capital of the fighters for the 
future of the safety of the world, is in no small measure 
the gift of the Bible to the world. The spiritual vision 
which hovers over the eyes of nations ready to meet the 
stern and terrible demand of the hour, is essentially a vision 
which has come to them from that civilization in which the 
Bible is an element of unique and far-reaching power. 

121 



[XII-i] A LIVING BOOK IN A LIVING AGE 

Another word must be added. After the war you cannot 
rebuild the world in safety or wisdom without the Bible. 
Only on the basis of the New Testament principles is there 
possibility of permanent peace. Only men with the vital 
energy of the New Testament type of idealism pushing 
them on can be trusted to remake the fabric of national 
and international relationships. And only men with the 
new life lifting them to their fullest power can be trusted 
to maintain the level of the world's civilization. 



• DAILY READINGS 

Twelfth Week, First Day 

Upon this many of his disciples went back, and walked 
no more with him. Jesus said therefore unto the twelve, 
Would ye also go away? Simon Peter answered him, 
Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of 
eternal life. — John 6: 66-68. 

The members of a class which was studying the life 
of Christ were attending a session near the close of the 
course. The teacher asked each member of the class to 
write his answer to the question, Why do you believe 
in Christ? Here are some of the answers: "I believe in 
Christ because he gives me such an interpretation of life 
as I find nowhere else." "I believe in Christ because his 
life appeals to me as does no other." ''I believe in Christ 
because he helps me to be stronger than my own desires." 
"I believe in Christ because he reenforces all my virtues 
and fights all my vices." "I believe in Christ because his 
friendship has given me citizenship in a new world." 'I 
believe in Christ because he has delivered me from my 
besetting sin." Every man appealed to his experience 
in thinking and living and to the contribution which Jesus 
Christ had made. It was an amplification of Peter's declar- 
ation, warm with his own experience: "Thou hast the 

122 



^ .^ 



THE LIVING BOOK AND OUR AGE [XII-2] 

words of eternal life." So Luther found it in the sixteenth 
century. So we may find it today. 

Twelfth Week, Second Day 

And he came forth and saw a great multitude, and he 
had compassion on them, because they were as sheep not 
having a shepherd: and he began to teach them many 
things. And when the day was now far spent, his disciples 
came unto him, and said, The place is desert, and the day 
is now far spent; send them away, that they may go into 
the country and villages round about, and buy themselves 
somewhat to eat. But he answered and said unto them, 
Give ye them to eat. And they say unto him, Shall we 
go and buy two hundred shillings' worth of bread, and 
give them to eat? And he saith unto them, How many 
loaves have ye? — Mark 6: 34-38. 

A young man greatly troubled by doubts once went to see 
Phillips Brooks. The great Boston preacher listened with 
friendly sympathy to his story and then asked him to attend 
Trinity Church the next Sunday morning. On that day 
Dr. Brooks preached on the text, "How many loaves have 
ye?' He told the story of the feeding of the five thousand. 
When the disciples used what they had, it was made equal 
to the entire need of the occasion. Then he declared that 
the principle involved had a wide application. When we 
build upon what we are sure of, it grows into more. A 
man does not live by his doubts. He lives by his beliefs. 
Let him discover what things he can depend upon and live 
by them. Then they will grow into more and more. And 
he will have the positive rich foundation of belief which 
he needs. 

Frederick W. Robertson, who had a great fight for his 
faith, felt at one time as if everything were disappearing. 
But at the worst he was sure that it is better to love than to 
hate, better to be noble than ignoble, and as he lived in the 
light of these undisputable truths, at last the great continent 
of his faith, which had been sinking beneath the sea, emerged 

123 



[XII-3] A LIVING BOOK IN A LIVING AGE 

again. He received back more than all which he thought 
he was about to lose. "How many loaves have ye?' is a 
notable question for the doubter in this transitional age. 

Twelfth Week, Third Day 

And he goeth up into the mountain, and calleth unto 
him whom he himself would; and they went unto him. 
And he appointed twelve, that they might be with him, 
and that he might send them forth to preach. — Mark 3: 
13, 14. 

The twelve disciples reached certainty and assurance 
not by talking about Jesus or arguing concerning his person, 
but by living with him. Companionship with Jesus an- 
swered their questions. To live with him in ethical and 
spiritual sympathy was to have all doubts laid low. 

The Bible gave its message to Luther because he was 
ready to open his life to its meaning. The living book 
is always ready to speak convincingly to those who will 
receive it into a sympathetic companionship. A man may 
know a great deal about the Bible and be a man who is 
unmoved by its claims. But if it ever enters the place 
of inner sympathy, if it is given the wide-open door of friendly 
welcome, it will master the man and reduce his hesitations 
and doubts to impotency. Dr. Henry van Dyke has called 
our time an age of doubt. It is the sort of doubt which 
is dissolved if, like the disciples, we become companions 
of the Master, and then see clearly the meaning of what has 
been revealed to us in that companionship. 

Twelfth Week, Fourth Day 

And Jesus uttered a loud voice, and gave up the ghost. 
And the veil of the temple was rent in two from the top 
to the bottom. And when the centurion, who stood by 
over against him, saw that he so gave up the ghost, he 
said, Truly this man was the Son of God. — Mark 15: 37-39. 

The centurion saw Jesus die And deep from his heart 
came the great tribute — only God could die like that. Not 

124 






THE LIVING BOOK AND OUR AGE [XII-5] 

the centurion alone has been mastered by that death 
which is like no other death in all the world. The hours 
on the cross have cut their way into the very conscience 
and heart of humanity. You feel that incidental things 
are being hurled aside and that you stand in the presence 
of that reality which speaks with entire authenticity and 
mastery, as you come to the hour of sympathetic appre- 
hension of the experience on the cross. The men who really 
see Calvary are never the same men afterward. Many of 
the difficulties of the age seem incidental when you have 
had that hour of understanding. 

Twelfth Week, Fifth Day 

If any man willeth to do his will, he shall know of the 
teaching, whether it is of God, or whether I speak from 
myself. — John 7: 17. 

Our age is very eager to find a test for truth. Here is a 
test given by Jesus himself. It emerges from the very heart 
of that account of Jesus which is given in the living book. 
The way to know, says Jesus in a wonderful epigram, is 
to do. It is the pragmatic test put in simple and graphic 
words. You can think and doubt. You can argue and 
doubt. But the hour of illuminated activity is the hour 
of knowledge. If you put Jesus Christ in command of 
your life, you will discover for a certainty whether he has 
the right to be the commander. The experience of his 
leadership will answer all questions you can ask as to his 
right to lead. 

You can argue long and without decision about the 
merits of the captain of a team. But when you see him 
conducting his team through a hard-fought game, some 
questions are answered. And if you are one of the team 
and again and again you experience the power of his effec- 
tive leadership, criticism becomes futile. Not the men on the 

125 



[XII-6] A LIVING BOOK IN A LIVING AGE 

bleachers but the men in the game must answer the great 
questions about Jesus Christ. 

Twelfth Week, Sixth Day 

Now is the judgment of this world: now shall the prince 
of this world be cast out. And I, if I be lifted up from 
the earth, will draw all men unto myself. — John 12: 31, 32. 

We know how amazingly the uplifted Christ has spoken 
to the world century after century. We have seen in par- 
ticular how he spoke to Luther and through him to his* age. 
To explain Christ you must explain the influences which 
have gone out from him. And that means a recognition 
that the form on Calvary has become the supreme moral 
and spiritual renewer of the world. 

An age which has a cross always has new eyes to see the 
cross. And for that reason our age is turning with new 
understanding to behold Golgotha. Upon the battlefields 
of the world men have met realities which have taken the 
glamor and fascination from many experiences, and have 
lifted the cross in an amazing isolation of lofty power. With 
the authority of agony speaking across the ages to agony, 
and heartbreak making its pang known to other broken 
hearts, the Christ of Golgotha is drawing men to him today. 

Twelfth Week, Seventh Day 

Every scripture inspired of God is also profitable for 
teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction which 
is in righteousness: that the man of God may be com- 
plete, furnished completely unto every good work. — II 
Tim. 3: 16, 17. 

This is Paul's putting of the pragmatic test. You are to 
measure inspiration by profitableness. That which comes 
from God profits man. The full revelation of God makes 
the complete man. 

The case for the Bible really rests here. The message 
which comes from the living book saves men from disin- 

126 






THE LIVING BOOK AND OUR AGE [XII-7] 

tegrating forces and leads them toward the complete life. 
And their completeness will be measured exactly by the 
fulness with which they appropriate that which the Bible 
brings. "It takes the whole message of the whole Bible 
to make a whole Christian." 

Other ideals of life are fragmentary. Other energies 
lack final dynamic. Confronted by the test of life, the Bible 
emerges triumphant. 

Our age has learned to turn from incidental tests to the 
great test. It has given a new sympathetic study to many 
a religion. It has followed with a new friendliness the long 
tale of human struggles along the way of life. And out of 
it all has come the knowledge that the Bible brings to men 
that which can be found nowhere else. The Bible, like the 
Sabbath, was made for man. In its word the whole out- 
reach of his struggling life is met and satisfied. The One 
Complete Man speaks through the Bible to the world. And 
the contagion of completeness goes out from Him perpet- 
ually. 

PERSONAL SUGGESTIONS 

No one else can put the great test for me. Am I willing 
to enter the laboratory and try the experiment for myself? 
Am I willing to begin obeying the behests of Christ, that 
in the hour of illumined obedience I may discover the extent 
of his right to command? Our age has many confusions, 
but in spite of them all the man who is willing to do is the 
man who will know. 



127 



CHAPTER XIII 

The Living Book and Democracy 

COMMENT FOR THE WEEK 

Two men were having a vigorous argument about the 
Reformation and its influence. "Martin Luther was one 
of the founders of democracy,' 5 declared the first. The 
second replied hotly, "Luther depended upon princes, 
distrusted the common people, and was one of the fathers 
of the Prussian conception of autocracy.' 5 A friend with 
a wide and diversified range of knowledge, and a habit 
of careful thought, had been listening to the rather tem- 
pestuous discussion. Now he spoke in a quiet, judicial 
tone which somehow carried a sense of weight and depend- 
ableness: "Luther's action at Worms put one individual 
over against the organized political and ecclesiastical life 
of the period. That insistence on the right of the individual 
to be true to his deepest life against all organized power 
had the very genius of democracy in it. In that sense we may 
say that Luther was a democrat, before the day of demo- 
crats. Life was not a political matter to Luther, however. 
And he was not a man of political leadership. When the 
peasants' war forced his hand, his word helped to crush the 
peasants. As years wore on he did distrust the common 
people more and more. He did believe more and more in 
a benevolent paternalism. In this sense his influence came 
to be registered against those currents moving toward de- 
mocracy, when they began to be felt in the world." 

If this sums up Luther's attitude toward what grew to 

128 



THE LIVING BOOK AND DEMOCRACY [XIU-c] 

be democracy, we want to ask a .deeper question What 
about the book which was Luther's great inspiration? What 
about that literature where he found the fire which came to 
glow so powerfully in his own heart? What is the relation 
of the living book to democracy? 

Few questions could be more vital than these to the people 
who are alive in the world today. The world is being made 
into a democratic world. To what degree has the Bible 
a share in the process, and what interpretation and guid- 
ance can it offer as tne endeavor goes forward? 

By democracy we mean the movement to give to every 
individual in the world the fullest and freest life which is 
consistent with the common good. It sees life from the 
standpoint of the individual. But it does not forget that 
there is more than one individual to be considered. Anar- 
chy asks so much liberty for every man that society is disin- 
tegrated, and in his wild self-assertion the individual loses 
infinitely more than he gains. Tyranny makes the state 
so powerful and all-inclusive that the individual is crushed. 
Democracy, seeking the valuable element in each extreme 
seeks to keep both the individual and the common good 
in mind. So life increases in orderly and organized quality 
at the very time when the individual emerges mto fuller 
and freer and more creative life. 

Now what is the relation to such ideals as these of the ex- 
perience and of the principles seen in the deepest We reflected 

in the Bible? , ... 

In the first place, the Bible is a great literature of indi- 
viduals. The big things happen in particular lives, then 
thev become the possession of the city, the tribe, and the 
nation. Abraham and Moses are illustrations of the 
biblical conception that the great movements go out trom 
an individual center. Even when the prophetic message 
has to do almost entirely with the people as a group as in 
the case of Amos, the prophet himself, uttermg his daring 









[XIII-c] A LIVING BOOK IN A LIVING AGE 

word to the careless hostile nation, is an unconscious exam- 
ple of individualism. 

By the time of the exile the sense of the individual comes 
to the front in clear and definite consciousness. The nation 
is in its grave. But in the teaching of Jeremiah and Ezekiel 
the individual emerges. Every separate soul, we are told, 
belongs to God. Men are not judged in lumps. Each 
life alone meets God. The problem is sharply individual. 
A man is lifted right out of his entanglement with his parents 
and family. Each spirit has its own standing-room in 
the presence of God. Here we have the very spirit of democ- 
racy before the days of democracy. 

If every single person has a place of his own and his social 
entanglements cannot destroy him in God's sight, then 
you have the principle for a new philosophy of humanity. 

Many of the Psalms refer to the group. But again and 
again there is a poignant note of an individual experience 
of fear or hope, of despair or triumph. Indeed, it would not 
be too much to say that the deepest reason for the power 
of the whole collection is found in an expression in song of 
the inmost experience of the individual human life. 

The New Testament is in a sharper sense a book of em- 
phasis on individual values. The common man is lifted 
to a new place. The Babe in the manger is an expres- 
sion of the potentialities of the common life in its hard 
and dreary and suffering ways. The choosing of the Twelve 
is based upon a sense of the tremendous significance of 
simple everyday human beings., Jesus always seeks the indi- 
vidual. And while he does not despise the great, he obvi- 
ously is deeply impressed by the potencies of common men. 
Whether rich or poor, learned or ignorant, he sees men as 
human beings and not as members of a particular social 
group. While he does not become one of any group to 
the exclusion of others, he is always ready to be the voice 
of any under the burden of life. He is always nearest to 

130 



THE LIVING BOOK AND DEMOCRACY [XIII-c] 



the man in need. Deeper than this, however, he believes 
in the common man. He trusts him. The great passage 
after Peter's confession implies the belief that men fresh 
from the round of the humblest life can grasp the realities 
which are central in the Kingdom of God. To Jesus the 
things which unite men in common humanity were always 
greater than the things which separate them. 

When you come to the unfolding of Christianity under 
the leadership of Paul, you find a conception of Christian 
experience which is based on the relation of every individual 
soul to God in faith through Jesus Christ. Every human 
spirit is capable of a relation of living faith. And that faith 
is the heart of religion. 

Here again you have a position whose corollaries inev- 
itably lift up our thought of all men. Citizenship in the 
Kingdom is on a plane on which men meet as equals. The 
New Testament Church is a democracy in spirit before the 
days of democracy as a political power. In other words, 
the very spirit of the New Testament has the heart of democ- 
racy in it. Centuries may pass before the corollaries are 
drawn out. But there they lie. 

We have seen that the problem of keeping the individual 
life and the good of the group in adequate perspective is not 
an easy one. Indeed it is the hardest social and industrial 
and political problem of our time. Does the New Testa- 
ment throw any light upon it? Did Jesus ever speak a 
word which will help us here? 

We are almost astonished to find that he spoke the final 
and interpreting word on this great theme. .Let us listen 
with fresh interest as he says, "I am the vine, ye are the 
branches." The trouble with a hundred world organiza- 
tions lies in the fact that they have been mechanical. You 
secured combination at the expense of life. And the indi- 
vidual was crushed in the wheels. Now Jesus solves the 
problem by suggesting an organism instead of a machine 

131 



[XIII-c] A LIVING BOOK IN A LIVING AGE 

It is one thing to be wheels in a vast mechanism; it is quite 
another to be branches in a vine. In the organism blood 
is pumped out to the farthest leaf from the parent vine. 
The relation is growing and living. It is not hard and rigid 
and lifeless. The only final solution of the relation between 
the individual and the group is an organism of love, where 
the connection is that of the flowing blood of life and not 
of belts and wheels, and all are united in the mighty spon- 
taneous allegiance of soul to the living Christ. The pro- 
f oundest social wisdom, the ultimate word of spiritual democ- 
racy, is found in the saying of Jesus, "I am the vine, ye are 
the branches." 

In an organism of love the individual is not lost. He 
comes to the largest and fullest and most creative life of 
which he is capable. In an organism of love the life of the 
group, the common good, is kept perpetually in mind. The 
group is never exploited by the individual. And in the Chris- 
tian organism of love all move forward summoned by the 
radiant ideal of life in and through the energy of Christ. 

In fact, the very genius of a Christian experience is one 
with the very genius of democracy. The new life creates 
sons of God and it makes them out of every kind of human 
material. And all political and social and industrial rela- 
tions must at last be worked out in the light of this sonship. 
So the living book as a functioning power in the world inev- 
itably leads toward democracy. 

Autocracy always has reason to fear the people who take 
the Bible seriously. 

Luther did not realize all the implications of the message 
of the book which changed the world for him. But he 
received its life into his own and fought to make it potent 
in his age. If we appropriate in the same spirit its message 
as we have learned to know it, we shall do more than find a 
place in democracy for the Christian religion. Christianity 
will become the interpreter of democracy to the world. 

132 






THE LIVING BOOK AND DEMOCRACY [XIII-i] 

We may go farther. We may say, with a sense of the 
solemn responsibility of using such words, that democracy 
itself can only survive and function in full and effective 
fashion in the atmosphere created by the living book. Take 
out of the world the sanctions and vitalities which make 
themselves felt in the Bible, and democracy will fall to the 
ground, the baseless fabric of an exquisite dream. The 
new life in Christ, when conscious of its meaning and impli- 
cations, is the creator and sustainer of democracy among 
men. 

DAILY READINGS 

Thirteenth Week, First Day 

And Jehovah God commanded the man, saying, Of 
every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: but of 
the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt 
not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou 
shalt surely die. — Gen. 2: 16, 17. 

This Genesis story has no end of significance when we 
get beneath the surface of it. We see God's connection with 
man as a personal relationship calling for individual decision 
and faithfulness. The man hears the command. He can 
disobey if he will. A willing choice of the way of obedience 
is the thing God asks. The individual stands sharply face 
to face with the will of God and must determine for or 
against it. This is the heart of the Bible's message as to 
man's responsibility. And this sense of the individual not as 
a part of a great mass, but in clear and distinct personality, 
is an attitude which involves that high valuation of each 
person which is essential in democracy. 

A great crowd of people congested Twenty-third Street 
near Madison Square, New York, one election night. One 
young student, working his way through the throng with 
a friend, turned suddenly and said, "All these people make 
me feel that I amount to nothing. What is one fellow in 
the great mass?" The friend, a brilliant theological stu- 

133 



[XIII-2] A LIVING BOOK IN A LIVING AGE 

dent, replied, 'Yes, I suppose one would feel that way if 
he didn't remember that when a man meets God he always 
meets Him alone. We are never lost in the crowd with 
Him.' 5 That is the attitude of the Bible. It gives every 
man the dignity of a personal relation with the Almighty. 

Thirteenth Week, Second Day 

And the angel of Jehovah came, and sat under the oak 
which was in Ophrah, that pertained unto Joash the 
Abiezrite: and his son Gideon was beating out wheat in 
the winepress, to hide it from the Midianites. And the 
angel of Jehovah appeared unto him, and said unto him, 
Jehovah is with thee, thou mighty man of valor. — Judges 
6: ii, 12. 

These words are from the fine tale of how a furtive 
farmer was made into a brave warrior. The thing we must 
not miss in the whole story is this: God saw something in 
the man which he had never seen in himself. Right in the 
common round of life God found this everyday man, and 
nobody was so astonished as Gideon himself. Why should 
he be called a man of valor? What had he done? The 
answer was that God judged him by his latent power and 
not by his actual achievement. 

God is always seeing things in people which they have 
never seen in themselves. He is always judging them by 
what they can do and not by what they have done. He is 
always bringing to light unsuspected powers in everyday 
men. This spirit of God's faith in people, of which the Bible 
is so full, is another thing which has deep kinship with 
democracy. Belief in people is the deep inspiration which 
is essential to the success of the democratic movement. 

Thirteenth Week, Third Day 

And the child Samuel ministered unto Jehovah before 
Eli. And the word of Jehovah was precious in those 
days; there was no frequent vision. And it came to pass 
at that time, when Eli was laid down in his place (now 

134 






THE LIVING BOOK AND DEMOCRACY [XIII-4] 

his eyes had begun to wax dim, so that he could not see), 
and the lamp of God was not yet gone out, and Samuel 
was laid down to sleep, in the temple of Jehovah, where 
the ark of God was; that Jehovah called Samuel. . . . 
And Jehovah came, and stood, and called as at other 
times, Samuel, Samuel. Then Samuel said, Speak; for 
thy servant heareth. — I Sam. 3: 1-4, 10. 

The God of the Bible is always doing surprising things. 
And a great many of these surprising things consist in trust- 
ing people you would not suppose he would have trusted, 
and using people you would not suppose he would have used. 
Here we have the tale of a time when God had a very impor- 
tant message to give. And we find him using a little boy 
for this august purpose. At once you see that God's thought 
of childhood gives childhood new meaning. As a matter 
of fact, whenever you find what God thinks of anything that 
thing means more. And whenever you find what he thinks 
of any people they mean more. And when you know his 
thought about any person old or young that person means 
more. He is always adding to our sense of human values. 
Here once more we have an attitude which has the promise 
of some of the deepest things of democracy in it. Unless 
you can develop a high sense of human values, democracy 
is impossible. 

Thirteenth Week, Fourth Day 

In those days they shall say no more, The fathers have 
eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on 
edge. But every one shall die for his own iniquity: every 
man that eateth the sour grapes, his teeth shall be set 
on edge. — Jer. 31: 29, 30. 

We have already quoted from Ezekiel a passage similar 
to the above. We go back to the idea again because it is 
of essential meaning for the relation of the Bible to democ- 
racy. It has been said that the sense of the individual 
emerges in Jeremiah and Ezekiel. There is the clearest 
statement here that a man must face the issues of his own 

135 



[XIII-5] A LIVING BOOK IN A LIVING AGE 

life, but not the issues of the lives of his ancestors. A man 
is not to suffer for other people's sins. He is to be judged 
clearly and definitely on the basis of his personal life. What 
he has done, not what somebody else has done, is the decisive 
matter. Here you have the principle which, fully expressed, 
involves men's equality before the law. It involves a treat- 
ment of every life on its own merits, apart from the life of 
the group ot which it forms a part. Apply this principle 
to the science of government and it can be worked out only 
in a democracy well advanced both politically and indus- 
trially. 

Thirteenth Week, Fifth Day 

But while he was yet afar off, his father saw him, and 
was moved with compassion, and ran, and fell on his 
neck, and kissed him. But the father said to his servants 
. . . this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was 
lost, and is found. — Luke 15: 20, 22, 24. 

One of the most difficult problems of democracy is the 
social wastrel. All the while he is endangering the whole 
social fabric. If democracy is to reach its fullest expression, 
some method must be found for changing the social wastrel 
into a productive man. Now the story of the lost son is a 
dramatic illustration of Jesus' consciousness of the value 
of the wastrel. It is a story of transformation through love. 
It is a story of restoration to noble and productive relation- 
ships. And the love of Christ is all the while changing 
wastrels into men. It is all the while making men who are 
capable of functioning in a democracy. It is not too much 
to say that the force of that Christian love which, with per- 
petual faith, goes forth to transform waste lives is one of 
the supreme assets of democracy. 

Thirteenth Week, Sixth Day 

Neither for these only do I pray, but for them also that 
believe on me through their word; that they may all be 

136 



THE LIVING BOOK AND DEMOCRACY [XIII-7] 

one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that 
they also may be in us: that the world may believe that 
thou didst send me. And the glory which thou hast given 
me I have given unto them; that they may be one, even 
as we are one; I in them, and thou in me, that they may 
be perfected into one; that the world may know that 
thou didst send me, and lovedst them, even as thou lovedst 
me. — John 17: 20-23. 

The seventeenth chapter of John contains the great inter- 
cessory prayer of Jesus. It is one of the most memorable 
and priceless things in the New Testament. We have 
quoted words which exalt believers into a great organism of 
love, like that which characterizes the inner life of God 
himself. The picture is so exquisitely lofty and gloriously 
beautiful that it fairly dazzles the eye of the mind. And the 
important thing to remember is this: any human being is 
welcomed to the great living brotherhood for which Jesus 
prays. It is not an autocracy of the spirit. It is a loving 
family to which every human being is invited. 

All who hear the message and heed it are welcomed. Here 
we have a new estimate upon humanity which offers the 
title of nobility to every human being. God asks all men 
to become sons of God. And that lifts life to a level which 
includes and transcends everything which we mean by 
democracy. 

Thirteenth Week, Seventh Day 

And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And he that 

heareth, let him say, Come. And he that is athirst, let 

him come: he that will, let him take the water of life 
freely. — Rev. 22: 17. 

As we come to the close of the New Testament, the doors 
are flung wide open. Words of invitation are sent forth by 
every messenger. With rich iteration we hear the great 
welcoming summons, "Come — Come — Come." All that 
God has to give is offered to all who are willing to receive. 

137 



[XIII-7] A LIVING BOOK IN A LIVING AGE 

The resources of the universe are put at the disposal of the 
common man. Here again we have democracy transcended 
and glorified. 

The problems of our modern movement are not problems 
which were ever understood by Martin Luther. In respect 
of these things the Book which he loved has a message which 
he never realized. He changed the sixteenth century by 
making compelling the biblical message of personal religion. 
We shall change the twentieth century when we bring to it 
the Bible's message of Spiritual Democracy. 

PERSONAL SUGGESTIONS 

We are considering principles which have a wide signi- 
ficance. They also have a near and personal meaning. 
Have I learned to value everyday men? Have I learned to 
see in people more than they see in themselves? Do I 
judge people by what they may be and not what they have 
been? Do I approach the wasted life as a life which can 
be made an asset to the world? Do I see all men in the light 
of the sonship God offers to them? These questions suggest 
the fashion in which the theory of democracy may become 
the practice of democracy in the individual life. 



138 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: Nov. 2005 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
{724) 779-21 11 



